Twilight Sparkle & The Martyr Of Zephyr Mountain

by PatchworkPoltergeist

An Atrium Implies A Heart

They passed through the mist into Cloudsdale, and the streets of Ponyville lay quiet behind them. Windows shrank into pinpoints of light as the land fell into a patchwork of fields and valleys. A dollhouse of a place. Beautiful and empty. A town that held its breath. Twilight remembered when it sang.

Five years ago, the market square would've bustled with all manner of tribes and species sporting feathers, scales, and fur. Thirty years ago it'd have been the center of an impromptu parade or a bunny stampede. Thirty or... no, the bunny stampede happened a little over fifty years ago, that's right. The years blended together from days to decades before she’d even thought to look up.

“Gallus, is Ponyville still under curfew?” Nymph City certainly was, and Sire’s Hollow and Fillydelphia hadn’t budged their restrictions either, but Representative Tiara had mentioned Ponyville completely lifting curfew last month.

A smear of blue and gray stooped to circle Princess Twilight’s perimeter one last time before they entered Cloudsdale airspace. “Not officially. Most want to play it safe; only go out when necessary, you know?”

The shapeless curls and swells of cloud solidified into buildings and neighborhoods. Bright rainbow fences carved tracts of sky into suburbs, each small patch lorded over by gentle wings and the careful eye of the local homeowners association. Yawning heads poked out of windows and bodies paused mid-flight to watch their princess pass through. A cluster of elderly mares exercising on the roof applauded. A stallion paused his cumulus sculpture to wave. His neighbor yanked her foal under the awning, watching Gallus’s shadow slide across her stratus lawn.

He noticed—he always noticed—but didn’t acknowledge. The griffon’s shadow swerved to cover Twilight’s six-o-clock. “Permission to speak freely, Highness?”

“Please, of course.”

“I don’t like it.”

Princess Twilight allowed herself a smile. “You’ve said that already.”

“Alright, I’ll elaborate: I hate it, this arrangement sucks, and it’s dumb. You should have a squadron up here. Another Element of Harmony, bare minimum.”

Zipping lines of Wonderbolts dipped and swerved in aerial salute as they passed the Academy. One of the griffon reserves banked extra hard and whooped.

“You are an Element of Harmony.” Without looking back, she added, “Yes, a real one.” How somegriff could be blessed by the Tree of Harmony, personally speak with it, manifest Harmony Magic no less than four times, and still manage to deny it, Twilight didn’t know. Perhaps wielding the element of Magic needed a prerequisite in self-doubt.

A short pause. Gallus clacked his beak shut. “…not what I was gonna say.” It was. “Look, the point is if you’re meeting her on her own turf—also a bad idea by the way—then you oughta bring more than one creaky old retiree with you. I mean, I’m coming whether you like it or not—duty doesn’t stop when the armor’s hung up—but you don’t know how many sympathizers she’s got up there.”

“Do you?”

“I know it's more than I’m comfortable with.” In other words, more than five. “Even if she doesn’t sic those Primaries of hers on you, what about all the others?”

“You mean all those scary flight school students?”

“She was just a student once, too.”

“A fair point, but if we stoop the house like an aggressor, aggression is how they’ll respond.” She glanced back at him. “You DO know I’m here to negotiate a body removal, don't you?

“Oh, sure.” His beak twitched in a smirk. “Organize a funeral, stop a civil war or three, tomayto-tomahto, right?”

“Right.” Twilight chuckled, the last hour bitter in her mouth.

“Please get her back, Princess.” Dinky Doo’s circled eyes shone bright and wet, the lines of her face taut. “I never meant this to become all… all THIS. Nopony told me Mom had family in Cloudsdale. If they’d just talk to me maybe we could—I just want to bury my mom like normal.” Dinky flattened her ears and winced. “N-not that Pegasus funerals aren’t normal! I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them. Mom just didn’t want one. That’s all. She wanted to be buried with her friends in Ponyville. I know I don’t have it in writing, but Princess Twilight, she asked me. It’s one of the last things she asked me.”

If only Derpy Hooves had asked the same of an attorney. Or written a will. Or gotten another birth certificate after the fire.

Fat cumulus rolled beneath their shadows, the thin grays and whites backlit by the soft pink dawn below them. Clouds splashed in all directions where the suburbs stopped and the city proper began, the curbs of cloudbanks indented where hooves and feathers pushed off them. Pegasi flitted through Cloudsdale’s arterial skyways, too busy to look up and too used to never needing to. Permanent warm fronts from the factory district’s excess energy heaved through the city’s wooly cloud coat. One would never know that the first snowflake shipments had been finalized.

Gallus broke the silence. “It’s a great city. Not as nice as Canterlot, but I’m biased. Can’t help it; good old Canterlot blew me away the first time I saw it. All this white stone that never got dirty with gold trim on everything, and nopony even cared. That’s the part that really got me, you know?”

Twilight nodded, and said nothing. If she spoke, he would take that as a cue to stop talking. If he stopped talking, she would start thinking. For once, for just a little while, her brain wanted a break.

“You ponies… you guys had gold everywhere. The street signs, the railings, even the trashcans in some neighborhoods, and nopony noticed because that’s just the way the world is. Gold on trashcans. Gems on dresses.” They dipped lower and banked through the heart of the factory district. Thunder rumbled behind the walls. “You boil it down to basics, and that’s Equestria: a place where nobody’s hungry or broke. Where you sew gems in dresses because you’ll never run out.” His voice drew tight, so quiet that Twilight strained to hear over the rush of wind. “I see this place, so old and stable, I think—the way a lot of ponies think—that… well, it has to keep going, right? Anything that old and beautiful must be strong. Strong enough to last forever.”

Downtown’s factory district bled into solitary airspace scattershot with individual cloudhouses wherever hearts pleased and zoning laws allowed. Traces of rock and trees poked through thinner clouds in the distance. In the east, Zephyr Mountain’s silhouette blocked the sun.

“Anyway, all that made me think…” In the open air, Gallus flapped closer. “I remembered Griffonstone. It was once strong and old and beautiful too.”

“I know,” Twilight finally said. “Thank you again for your company, Gallus. I’m glad you’re here.”

“Hey, no problem. Anything for my old headmare.” He smiled in full.

Princess Twilight smiled back and held the warmth of their friendship tight. “I know you’re less than pleased with my… smaller entourage, but under the circumstances, I value quality over quantity. You’re top quality, Captain Gallus; don’t ever doubt that.”

She wouldn’t say no to at least one other friend up here, but all things considered, this was still the best option. As several advisors and a grudging Luster Dawn admitted, Cloudsdale perched in the eye of a storm that had been building for the better part of a decade. Some Unicorn dignitaries practically needed conscription to sit next to hornless ponies—those who had shown up at all—during the last summit. Rumors whispered of secret meetings between the major cloud cities, of underground organizations of Earth Ponies, and Unicorn cabals writhing between Canterlot’s walls.

The situation hung more delicate than a kerosene bubble over a campfire. Unfortunately, most of Twilight’s go-tos were walking cacti. With a ban on cloudwalk spells on the docket (again), another Unicorn was out of the question. The Primaries—indeed, even many Pegasi who didn’t sympathize with them—would consider two Alicorns a threat. Rainbow Dash had business at Mount Aris and could be too volatile. Pinkie Pie had her hooves full in Ponyville, Applejack had too much bad blood and candor, and Fluttershy…

Mistral needs his space. I’m… I’m not really welcome there right now. Oh, but please do give him my love… even if I don’t love all of his choices.

Fluttershy was complicated.

Gallus shifted closer. “Hey. You doing alright, Twilight? You’re muttering again.”

Again? She really needed to tamp that down. When she returned to Canterlot, she’d see her tea-pony about a calming brew. “Just thinking out loud.”

Thinning gray feathers ruffled with his squint. “Outta curiosity, when’s the last time you slept?”

“Last night.” A full forty-nine minutes. “Alicorns need less sleep,” she added, “and in fact, some historians believe Alicorns from the lost city of Skyros could stay awake for moons with no adverse effects at all!”

Gallus flicked his tail, eyes on the flitting shadows darting through stratocumulus in the distance. The Pegasi had been tailing them since the factory district. None of them came within a mile, and under cloud cover, neither of them knew if these had been the same ponies or a rotating group. Likely a knot of curious travelers, or commuters en route to the mountain. Or the Primaries had sent out scouts to monitor the situation.

“Didn’t know that. How’d those Skyros ponies handle treason in the old days?”

“The records don’t say.” If the Unicorn Kingdom’s glassing policy held precedent, Twilight imagined it wasn’t pretty.

“Something harder than a fifty-year sentence, I’ll bet. Still say that sentence vote was hot dogspit.” Gallus flinched. “Apologies for the language, Princess, but it was. Two counts of grand treason, four attempted assassinations, collusion with enemies of the Crown twice, at least fourteen attempted murders, and that’s not counting damage from the siphon and the Bell.” His head swung about to crow a warning call to a brown Pegasus who’d edged beyond the mile radius. The Pegasus folded their wings and banked east, towards the mountain. “Hmph. Maybe I got a C-plus in Equestrian history, but I know Nightmare Moon did way more time for less damage.”

The nitpicker in Twilight’s brain argued that “murder”—a Griffish loanword—didn’t even exist as a charge during the Battle Of The Bell. “Nightmare Moon wasn’t a minor, either.”

“Agree to disagree, Your Highness. There’s nothing ‘minor’ about Cozy Glow.”

Dead ahead lay a collection of peaks, cliffs, and tableland, their tops stripped smooth from the constant assault of Cloudsdale precipitation. Streaks of grass flowed in curated lawns alongside cloud buildings and free-roaming stratus. Once, the area now known as Zephyr Mountain housed several independent villages, their names lost to time after being annexed by Cloudsdale as a tourism hub for flightless ponies. Prime real estate for retirees, weak-winged Pegasi, and mixed-tribe families. Official records listed it as Northeast Cloudsdale: Land Division Nine. Locals just called it The Heights.

Dull blue feathers flexed through the gray and white of Gallus’s ruff. His claws flexed. “I don’t mean to cough up old bones, but this whole thing’s been kicking around in my crop for ages, and if not for her we wouldn’t be in…” He sighed. “Anyway, I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Twilight said, “but I don’t think that’s the only thing bothering you.”

Dawn poured down the rocks to light a solitary villa nestled in a cliff overlooking the clouds. The brand-new white stone walls and blue flagstones shimmered bright. Ahead, a trio of upwind Pegasi broke from the clouds to land outside the villa gates. They circled the gathered crowd twice before they gave up on a ground view and settled in a low stratus.

Gallus clicked his tongue. “‘Private little talk,’ my eye. Coloratura’s farewell concert had less ponies.”

So much for a quiet entrance. Twilight sighed. She’d hoped against hope that basic respect for the dead might encourage some tact for Cozy Glow. Or at least that the early meeting time would discourage a crowd. Twilight squinted. “…Are those sleeping bags?”

“Hey, uh, are you sure you want to do this? Out in the open?” A silly question, really. The crowd had already seen them; Twilight couldn’t go back even if she wanted to. Gallus shook his head. “I’ve heard a couple of those broadcasts of theirs. It… it almost sounds like they hate you.”

“Not me. They hate the situation.” Whatever little difference that made.

“A situation you didn’t cause. This isn’t fair! You’re not even the one who turned her to stone—”

True.

“—but you’re the one holding a mop when you never made this mess.”

Less true.

“It’s almost like you got set up to fail. Why…” The end of the sentence trailed into the sky. His expression said it louder: “Why did Celestia do this to you?”

“Nopony truly knows the future, Gallus.” Chilled winds bit at Twilight’s ears, and in the corner of her eye, cumulus shelves massed above the weather factory. “The day I left Canterlot, all I’d wanted was to arrange a party and read my books.” All things considered, Twilight had it easy. Taking the throne in her mid-twenties had been scary enough. She couldn’t imagine doing so at age fifteen, the land barely thawed from Windigos and harrowed by monsters on all sides. “And once, all Celestia wanted was to help raise the sun.”

In the space of a blink, Twilight saw strings of pastel mane fanned across a sweaty pillow. Fevered pink eyes clouded over with delirium and a thousand years of mistakes, staring past Twilight somewhere far away. An old wooden bed with an old white Alicorn who couldn’t leave it.

“In any case, Equestria’s seen worse messes than this. It’ll get through.” It always did. Twilight swallowed the hot lump in her throat and propped her smile higher. It always did. “We can fix this.” I can fix this. “Like always. We need to believe that.”

In the last few years alone, she’d handled Breezie revolutions, weather strike negotiations, and the economic fallout of the Market Riots. She’d handle this too.

“Alright,” Gallus said. “I’ll sure try, but since she came back everything’s been so…”

“I know. That’s why now, more than ever, you need to trust that friendship will win out.” She smiled at her old guard with the gentle confidence of somepony who’d already read the end of this story. Who knew for certain everything would turn out okay. Who knew that everyone could go home happy. Safe. Alive. “At the end of the day, it’s another friendship problem.”

“Seems kinda big for a friendship problem.”

“They come in all sizes, Gallus.” Twilight’s smile shrank. “I just wish I could understand. I thought she’d been doing so much better. Did she relapse, did she fake the whole thing, or…?” Five years out of stone, and Cozy Glow remained no less the enigma she’d been at the start. “What does she want from all this?”

“Who knows why that mare does anything? Probably a bunch of stuff kicking around in her craw; even she might not know.” Shoulders broad, eyes sharp, and vocabulary rearranging to so-called “Canterlot Mode”, Captain Gallus led them in for landing. “But if you’ll allow me a guess, Highness, I believe she wants what most Pegasi want.”

“Victory?”

His eyes scanned the ponies gathered on rooftops, in clouds, and the great mass in a plaza outside the gated villa. The Pegasopolitan-revival home shadowed them all, sapphire banners snapping in the wind. “Glory.”

The first flashbulb snapped—a quick pop of light and smoke in the distance. Another. Another. And then a galaxy of dazzling light and noise and shouting in a great undulating rainbow of bodies.

In the center of it all, five pegasi hovered in v-formation, a thin island of calm in the chaos. The Primaries. When the Alicorn's shadow fell upon them, they did not move. When the princess landed, they did not kneel. As one, they inclined their heads to her, but no more.

Up close, the Primaries’ muscles trembled beneath their shiny coats, wings twitching at their sides. An orange mare with a fluffy mane breathed with practiced calm. The sea-green mare beside her kept a hard gaze that flicked between Gallus, the sky, and the roof behind her, as if calculating how fast any of them could reach the house. A stormy gray Pegasus stared straight ahead and breathed hard when Twilight looked at her. As expected, the light purple stallion at the front simply frowned. Anyone would have thought they stood before a guillotine—five brave souls staring down oblivion or else their first visit to a police station.

Twilight resisted the urge to sigh and shake her head. Political faction with the ears of the nation or not, they were still five teenagers (six, counting Cozy) in over their heads. For most, this was their first time seeing the Princess up close.

The blazing fervor of Twilight’s arrival simmered to a dull roar of murmurs, whispers, and the frantic dash of reporters’ pens. At a glance, she found two Earth Pony reporters and one Unicorn from Canterlot Chronicle, each standing at opposite ends of the crowd. The Pegasi gave all three a wide berth. Better than Twilight had hoped, really. She withheld her disappointment and tried to understand.

In times of crisis, old grievances oozed through Equestria’s floorboards and ponies fell back to the shadows for safety. They feared what they did not know and trusted what they did. Instinct didn’t care about friendship speeches or treaties or a thousand years of peace. Ponies were built to run. The blueprints threaded through the bones, the blood, the hearts and anxious hooves and twitching wings ready to tear off at the first sign of danger. “You are like me, so you are my friend. If you are not like me, can I really trust you?” Herd instinct, the textbooks called it.

Twilight cleared her throat. “Good morning, my little ponies.” The crowd quieted. “I’m glad we’ve finally managed to arrange a meeting. Thank you for taking time out of your day to meet with me.”

The city of Cloudsdale rested high above the heads of the wingless tribes. Untouchable without machines or spells, thousands of Pegasi had never met a single Unicorn or Earth Pony, and would never have reason to. They knew wings. They trusted wings. So, in spite of the horn, the Pegasi of Mount Zephyr trusted Twilight Sparkle. She was like them. She was their friend. For now.

The light purple stallion flared his wings and rose to meet her, hovering at eye level. “Good morning, Princess Twilight. Cozy Glow will be here in a moment.” His frown ironed into a flat neutral line. “She moves a bit slower these days, you understand.” He extended a wing to the v-formation under him. “These are some of her Primaries. From front to back: Cold Snap, Fluffalove, Echo Burst, and I believe you’ve already met Glitter Dart through Rainbow Dash.”

The orange Primary—Fluffalove, yes?—leaned towards the gray one. “I thought Rainbow was supposed to come today instead.”

“Maybe she’s busy scraping the mud off her withers,” Cold Snap whispered back.

The stallion indicated himself. “And the two of us have already met.”

“Of course, Mistral Drift.”

Goodness, he’d gotten tall. He’d inherited his grandfather’s long spindle legs, and didn’t need to fly far to meet Twilight’s eye. Where he’d gotten that hard stare, she certainly couldn’t say. Not at The School Of Friendship; he’d have had to actually attend class for that.

“I’m sorry I missed you and your grandfather at the Gala.” Twilight nodded toward the house. “I hope Zephyr Breeze is feeling better?” He still had it in him to style manes, judging by Mistral’s fancy green and white pompadour.

Amusement glinted in his eyes. Under different circumstances, he might have laughed. “He’s well enough to spend half the night complaining about fashion trends.” Mistral bobbed his head towards Gallus with a slight smile. “I don’t remember agreeing to guards. What, are you scared of us? The Alicorn who fought Tirek versus us five? That fight’s kinda one-sided, don’t you think?”

“Captain Gallus is here as a friend, nothing more.” She glanced at the elderly griffon, who nodded with the friendliest smile he could manage. “But as I recall, we also agreed to a private meeting with your leader.” Twilight's ear flicked towards the distinctive clicking of a camera motor. “Somehow, I can’t help the feeling that we have very different ideas of what ‘private’ means.”

“We did, but hey, word spreads fast in The Heights. Besides, Cozy’s not even here yet, and it’s not like these guys are coming inside anyway.” Mistral Drift ignored the round of disappointed groans from the audience. “As for us, we’re here for the same reason he’s here. Moral support.”

Gallus and Twilight shared a skeptical blink. Over half of Zephyr Mountain’s population was well past retirement age. Interesting how word had only spread among the thirty-and-under crowd.

“Grandpa actually planned on coming too, until he found out how early you’d be.”

“Fluttershy wanted to come as well, but the sanctuary demanded her attention today. She asked me to send you her love.” Twilight frowned at Mistral’s dismissive tail flick, and stepped closer. “She misses you very much, you know. I’m sure she’d love you to come visit.”

With a snort and sharp snap of wings, Mistral drew back. “I’ll consider it when she stops letting him in the house. After all he’s done! Knowing what he’s still capable of. I won’t do it.”

Gallus rolled his eyes. “Here it comes.”

“Discord is the one who hurt her in the first place—the petrification was HIS idea!” Mistral Drift’s voice soared over the plaza, and all through the crowd ears pricked and cameras focused and voices grumbled.

“He planned it!” cried Echo Burst. Ah. Now Twilight recognized her. The blue-on-blue coat was unremarkable in Cloudsdale, but nopony could forget that radio voice. “He seeded ideas of the Bell. He disguised himself as Grogar and false-flagged the attack. That monster planned it all from the start!”

Mistral nodded. “Everypony knows Discord had a grudge against Tirek and Chrysalis, and he let Cozy Glow—a filly, a Pegasus citizen of Equestria, and YOUR student—get caught in the crossfire. And you stood by while it happened, when Cozy barely did anything!”

Twilight’s left lung disagreed. Some nights, it still burned where Cozy’s magic struck her. A near-perfect shot. A practiced shot.

“Discord has already answered for his part in the Grogar incident.” She ignored the eye-rolls and grumblings. It’s a distraction. Move on. Like many Pegasi, the Primaries understood the value of the high ground and a platform. “In the same way that Cozy Glow has answered for hers, and served her sentence.”

“Two hundred years of community service and an apology.” Cold Snap smirked. “Oh yeah, that’s totally the same as Tartarus or petrification.”

“The way I heard it, nopony turned any of the Unicorn traitors to stone.” Mistral narrowed his eyes. “Fluffalove, what happened to the Unicorn mare who led the Storm King into Canterlot?”

The orange Pegasus flipped rolls of white curls out of her eyes. “First officer of the Night Guard’s foreign division. What about that Unicorn cult leader who tore apart time and space, Glitter Dart?”

“Oh, her? She’s headmare of the School Of Friendship,” said the small green mare in back. Glitter Dart tilted her head. “And what happened to the Pegasus filly from the same school?”

“Tartarus!” cried all five Primaries.

Mistral Drift rounded on the crowd. “And after that?”

“STONE!” Echo Burst’s shout snowballed through the plaza, picking up voice after voice until the crowd matched her volume. “Stone! Stone! Stone!”

Princess Twilight’s wings splayed wide, and she took a decisive step forward.

Feathers puffed, The Primaries drew closer together, a thin veneer of anger drawn over their fear.

“Enough.” Even at a whisper, the Royal Canterlot Voice shivered through the bedrock. The thin trees vibrated like tuning forks. “If you want to open this debate—again—my court is open. You know that.” Her gaze lifted above The Primaries and into the crowd. “You all know that.”

“There’s nothing to ‘debate’. It’s rained and dried.” Mistral Drift’s voice lowered but it didn’t shake. “When the royal Alicorns and their sycophants can jab their horns wherever they please, there is no friendship in that magic. Think about it, Pegasi. If they still threaten our Imperishable Cozy Glow, just a sweet little child of the air—”

Gallus barked a laugh of disbelief. “Child of—? Kid, she’s nineteen!

The gates eased open.

“Eighteen and three-quarters, actually. Or sixty-seven with the statue gap, but hey, who’s counting?” All smiles, Cozy Glow trotted into a fresh surge of camera flashes. Her pinned blue ringlets hit the sweet spot between ingenue and high commander. A silk half-cape draped over her side in the style of the ancient senators though she wore it with the nonchalance of a bathrobe falling off her withers. It shimmered in the morning sun, white with blue trim, the colors of a fresh spring sky. And also of the old Pegasopolis flag.

Tilting her head, Cozy blinked at the cameras, the crowd, and the Princess of all Equestria as if she’d only just noticed them. “Everypony’s sure fired up this morning, huh?” She waved up at the princess. “Good morning, Twilight! Hope I didn’t keep you waiting long.”

“Not at all.” Just long enough for her ponies to prep the crowd ahead of time. “Good morning, Cozy Glow.”

The Primaries stood aside to give their leader the floor. Mistral Drift hovered a few feet behind her, trying to drag his frown into something more neutral.

By the light of the paparazzi, they shook hooves. Twilight handled the little pink hoof as if it were glass. Cozy had a death grip.

“I’m glad to find you in such a good mood this morning,” said Twilight.

“It’s easy when you’ve got great ponies to support you.” She waved at Mistral, who smiled as if the stars had fallen into his lap. They must have been dating again. Hopefully that had started after the break up with Flurry. “Sorry if these guys get a little excited. They’re so passionate about the work, and it’s been so crazy out here lately. You don’t mind if they come along for a bit?”

“We did agree on close friends and family.” Twilight flicked an ear toward the cameras. “I had no idea you made friends with so many ponies.”

“With my schedule? Boy, I wish!” Cozy giggled. “You’re their princess; that makes all of them your friends.” Walls of teeth gleamed in her smile. “So whatever you can say to me, you can share with your friends, right?”

Gallus lashed his tail. “Same old Cozy I remember.”

“Thanks, I moisturize.” She didn’t spare a glance. “Should we start now, Twilight?”

“We can.” Twilight bent her head and silently indicated the crowd. “With all these ponies, are you sure you’re still comfortable using—?”

“Positive,” said Cozy. “What do I have to be scared of?”

“Very well.” Twilight lit her horn.

The necklace popped onto the stone between them: an ancient behemoth of gold, rubies, and glowpaz. The jeweled eyes in the center were kind of cute if you ignored the whole staring-into-the-naked-depths-of-your-soul thing. On loan from The Ahuizotl Museum, the Truth Talisman of Tonatiuh still smelled like its display case.

In the pink glow of Twilight’s magic, the talisman split itself into two perfect copies, scuff marks and all. “May I?”

Cozy Glow exchanged nods with her Primaries. “Go ahead.”

Slowly, the truth talismans levitated to both parties and simultaneously clasped themselves around their necks. “Like we agreed: no lies, no tricks. One hour, two talismans.”

As settled by their respective proxies after a week and a half of negotiating terms and conditions. Forget Grogar’s Bell, Cozy’s legal team was the real terror.

Gulping hard, Cozy shifted her withers under the weight of the amulet. “Is it supposed to feel like a lava slug’s trying to strangle me?”

“That’s how you know it’s working.” Thank heavens.

By all her research, magical artifacts still held their arcane properties under a duplication spell. Every artifact had its own unique quirks, however, and after the long transport arrangements from the museum, Starlight Glimmer only had a few hours to test it.

“Besides that, how are you feeling so far, Cozy?”

A dim emerald glow backlit Cozy’s pupils. “I feel…” Her eye twitched. “…a little sleepy, actually. You arrived before I finished my coffee, and I haven’t had the chance to take my morning walk yet.”

The talisman would function, no question of that. Any dilution of the artifact’s potency under duplication, however, remained to be seen. Tests had gone smoothly with Madame Silver Spoon, Big Cheese, and both Flim Flam Brothers. Still, even if some of those ponies had built careers on manipulation, stratagem, and guile, none of them actually had cutie marks for it. Truth spilled easily for ponies used to sharing it and broke fast from those used to burying it. As for ponies who’d spent their entire lives gently bending the truth…

“Say, why don’t we take that walk right now?” Cozy’s wing stretched to feel the wind thread through her feathers. “Mm, that mountain air’s amazing, isn’t it? Does wonders for lung problems.”

Well, Twilight would take what she could get.

“I wouldn’t mind a little exercise. I haven’t had the opportunity to see your new house yet.”

“What a coincidence. I haven’t had the chance to show off my fantastic new house, either.”

The crowd laughed as the media ponies prepped their notebooks, cameras, and microphones for the walk. Pegasus onlookers fanned out to snatch any free airspace above the villa.

Cozy led a brisk trot through the gates and into a garden. Heart-shaped bilberry shrubs walled the soft walking path. Farther out, colorful sprays of coltsfoot, tansy, and purple columbines burst from tasteful brick pallets. “I’m more about baking than gardening, so I decided not to fight the mountain and use what grows here already. I just made it all look nice.” She gestured to an open patch of lawn. “I come out here for weekend yoga and thinking walks. I used to do my best thinking on flights, but a walk’s just as good—” The talisman glowed. “—if you lower your standards by half.”

“It’s doing well for autumn,” Twilight said. “As I recall, your therapist recommended this garden, didn’t he?”

“Sure did! Thanks to Doc Evergreen, I learned how to use my anger constructively. Heads up, Fluff.” Cozy plucked a bilberry and tossed it into the air.

Fluffalove nabbed it in her tail and popped it into her mouth.

“Good catch! Hate to admit it, Twilight, but I’ve got you to thank for all this: the garden, my support system, and… well, my second shot in general. Everypony deserves a second shot, right?” She grinned. “Can’t think of a better way to sharpen your aim.”

The truth talisman warmed Twilight’s chest as a dozen responses flew into her throat: Your aim to do what? Take revenge? Undermine thousands of years of tribal unity? Drive everypony into a brutal civil war they can’t come back from? She bit every one of them back. Truth didn’t mean spit-balling every random thought.

Cozy watched the princess with a neutral smile, eyes bright with interest.

It didn’t mean she had to take the bait, either. Twilight chose the safest option. “Oh? Your aim to do what, exactly?”

“Aw Twilight, it’s just a metaphor; it applies to all sorts of things. But if I had to choose something specific, I’m much better at building relationships with other ponies.” She smiled up at the formation of Pegasi drifting overhead.

“Speaking of relationships,” said Twilight, “Evergreen told me you finally sat down with your father. How did that go?”

The smile stiffened. “If you mean the meeting with Svengallop, it… could’ve gone worse. I learned to forgi—” The word crumbled in her mouth, and Cozy’s eyes went bright green. “We worked it—” Brighter. She winced through gritted teeth. “Golly! This thing really does work. If everypony had one of these, we wouldn’t need an Element of Honesty anymore.” She laughed at her own joke, and half the crowd laughed with her. “Alright, let’s call Svengallop a work in progress. There, you gaudy old necklace, happy now?” The talisman's glow faded. “Okay, then.”

That settled it: the artifact stopped outright lies, but couldn’t force an unfiltered truth. It didn’t mean truth couldn’t be reworded, tailored, or omitted altogether. Well within Cozy Glow’s comfort zone. Great.

They stepped through an ivy-covered trellis into a wide patio. The house’s massive glass doors reflected light across a cliffside infinity pool. A small flock of Pegasi gathered around the edge, surrounded by luxury towels and tall stacks of notes. A brown stallion popped his head out of the water and waved. “Morning, Cozy!” they chorused.

“Good morning, everypony! Let’s all try and do our best today, okay? Every day can be the best day ever if we try!” Cozy waved down Echo Burst. “Go see if Fissile Whistle needs help with those pamphlets, please? Thanks.”

While Echo broke formation, several photographers took time to document the most exclusive pool in Cloudsdale. Around the patio, faces peered over the lip of the walls and rings of onlookers hovered just beyond the property’s airspace. The crowd had whittled to a fifth of its original size. Only the Primaries, reporters, and photographers remained. Nothing said friendship like a press pass.

Twilight watched Gallus’s cautionary swoop around the perimeter. “Even if you didn’t work it out with Svengallop, I’m glad you tried. The effort’s still worth something. Not everypony gets to say their piece before it’s too late.”

“I only did it for the probation list.”

“Friendship lesson.”

Cozy glanced at Gallus coming in to land. “Uh-huh. Like the guard captain is ‘moral support’.” When the winged shadow passed over her, she pulled her silk cape close and shied away. “Anyway, we’re not here to talk about my parents. We're all here for Ditzy Doo. Or Derpy Hooves? I keep getting mixed intel about the name.”

“She used both. Either name works.” They dipped under the awning that framed the house. Twilight lifted her head to admire the branching wings that adorned the columns overhead. Few ponies chose Corvidian style anymore.

“I read an article about her yesterday. Super interesting stuff.” One ear swiveled toward the train of reporters following alongside the patio. “Like, I never knew Derpy took a hit from the Storm King and got turned to stone so you could run off to find the Hippogriffs. Learning’s so much fun, isn’t it?”

“That’s not exactly—”

“I met her a couple of times.” Cozy pushed on as if she hadn’t said a word. The words pattered quick, as if the subject fascinated her ever-so-much and she wished nothing more than to share it with everypony. “I remember she told me it was nice to see fillies still sending letters, and that I was so kind to be penpals with those who never got mail. Pretty thoughtful, that Derpy Hooves. She brought everypony muffins during midterms. Those were raspberry, right Gallus?”

Gallus, forced into a narrow porch with low visibility, glared at her.

“Or blueberry, I dunno.” Cozy shrugged. “She must have had an awful lot of friends if her funeral’s such a big deal.”

“She did,” Twilight sighed. “Ponyville won’t be the same without her. We’ll all miss her.”

Impossible to think her last delivery to Canterlot had been a month ago. Twilight still expected that sweet wrinkly smile to poke through the window, holding Pumpkin Cake’s newest letter. The last time she saw her alive, Derpy had been resting with Luster Dawn in the courtyard, sharing stories of when little Dinky thought the toilet was haunted.

“Derpy was one of the most dedicated ponies I’ve ever met. She was visiting a cousin in West Cloudsdale when she passed away.”

Cozy tilted her head. “I’ll bet my buttons that cousin’s the pony who wants a good old-fashioned feather pyre too, huh?”

Twilight eyed her carefully. “He is.” Indeed, they’d flown over his neighborhood twenty minutes ago. The temptation to teleport the body straight into Ponyville Mortuary had been overwhelming. “He says he won’t back down on his position.”

Above, Cold Snap weaved a casual corkscrew through the columns. “Huh. Sounds like this stuff can get complicated with mixed-tribe families.”

“Sure does,” said Cozy. “But I don’t know what that has to do with—” The talisman flared, and she winced hard. “This whole funeral thing is… beyond my scope. I don’t even know this cousin of hers.”

“Perhaps not, but a good word from you could convince him otherwise. I believe he would respect your opinion a great deal; much of Cloudsdale does. Losing a parent is hard enough without a legal battle.” To say nothing of the media buzz around it. “If nothing else, Dinky deserves to lay her mother to rest the way she wants and—” Mid-sentence, Twilight realized she’d tread on delicate ground. The talisman didn’t care. The rest came out anyway. “—you understand that more than anyone here.”

Her pace slowed, but if Twilight hit a sore spot, Cozy didn’t show it. “What Dinky wants or what Derpy wanted?”

Time for that talisman to earn its keep. Even if the papers twisted it tomorrow, nopony could accuse her of lying. “Both. Dinky Doo doesn’t have a preference; she wants to do what Derpy asked of her—to be buried with her friends in Ponyville.”

In the eaves of the porch, The Primaries murmured darkly among themselves.

“What sort of Pegasus willingly goes underground forever? How awful.”

“It’s gross.”

“Imagine not seeing the sky one last time.”

“I mean, what do you expect? All that time in Ponyville with all those—”

Cozy Glow hushed them with a look. “Alright, but did you hear Derpy say that? Did anypony besides Dinky hear? No offense to the mare, but all we have is her word.”

A word that would have more weight with at least a birth certificate. Legally, it was open and shut, even if everypony in town knew better.

“If it really doesn’t matter to Dinky Doo, why can’t she just come to Cloudsdale for the funeral?”

Twilight gave her a flat stare. “Many Unicorns don’t exactly feel comfortable in Cloudsdale anymore. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you headlined the petition for the cloudwalk ban, did you not?”

Cozy Glow blinked innocently. “What, are Unicorns too good to use balloons like the Earth Ponies?”

Mistral Drift snorted. “They want to walk on our clouds, but I don’t see any breaking their backs at the factory. When the thunder rolls, they all have places to be. It’s not so fun playing Pegasus when the clouds get dark.”

“Right.” Cozy pawed a drifting tuft of cumulus. “The clouds are ours; we make them, we maintain them, we should keep them. Why can’t we have that, Twilight? One thing that belongs to us? Why do the Unicorns think they have a right to everything?”

“You’re generalizing,” Twilight shot back. “The views of Project Northstar don’t represent the feelings of all Unicorns. Just as The Primary Movement doesn't represent the feelings of all Pegasi.”

“Of course not. We feel a certain way, but that doesn’t mean everypony has to.” She put her hoof to her heart, skimming the surface of the talisman. “Unlike certain other organizations, WE don’t think we’re superior to any other tribe. We just focus on our own tribe’s priorities first. It’s important to practice Loyalty.”

“There’s a difference between Loyalty and ostracism, Cozy Glow.”

Slowly, Cozy’s eyes slid between the reporters, Twilight, and the griffon behind her. She said nothing and flicked her ears.

Glitter Dart humphed. “There’s a difference between taking a sky taxi and growing wings for a buckball game, too.”

“I dunno, Glitter, it’s not that bad. Those games happened out of the League, right?” Cozy smiled at Twilight and didn’t wait for confirmation. “Right. Private games fall under house rules, and Unicorns from the magic school want the chance to practice their own special skills. Nothing wrong with prioritizing your own tribe, is there?”

More bait. Twilight steered the conversation back home. “This is not a case of prioritizing tribe, it’s a matter of prioritizing the wishes of the dead.”

“Twilight, don’t twist the subject. Funerals are for the living, and these living ponies come from different tribes. Each tribe would rather have the dead mare buried in a different tradition. It’s not that complicated, but I can understand why you might think so.” In a merry click of hooves, Cozy drew closer to trot beside her and met the Alicorn’s stroll step for step. “You don’t favor any tribe, right?”

“I favor unity.” The only thing the talisman allowed out of Twilight’s mouth.

“Which makes no tribe top priority. Totally understandable. You’re just so busy these days, helping not just Equestrians but all sorts of creatures in all corners of the world. That many problems on one pony’s plate? Golly, no wonder little old us got lost in the shuffle. That’s why The Primaries are here to pick up the slack!” Her grin widened with Twilight’s frown. “But it’s fine if you don’t agree. Opinions are unique to everypony—oh!” Cozy offered Gallus an apologetic nod. “Every creature.”

The lashing tip of Gallus’s tail bristled. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No, no, I’ve been rude. I’ve been so caught up with Twilight’s visit I completely forgot about you!” The corners of Cozy’s mouth dipped in remorse, but her round eyes sparkled. “You look great for eighty.”

“I’m seventy-one.”

She looked him over again. “…Really? Wow. Anyway, how are you? I haven’t seen you around since The Crystal Cotillion.” Her free wing stretched to feel the rolling breeze and her pace slowed to a stroll. “Have you gone back to visit the Dragonlands? I hope Smolder’s eggs are okay.”

The sentence hung heavy in the air. News of the dragon hatchling epidemic had broken in Equestria several days ago. Succinct articles outlining the basics. Vague statements in news broadcasts. The minimum of necessary public knowledge. Buried deep beneath the fireworks of domestic affairs, most ponies hadn’t seen it at all.

“Exactly how,” asked Gallus, “do you know about the eggs?”

“Well, kinda hard for eggs to hatch if they’re losing magic.” Cozy ignored the round of murmurs from the press. “The radio mentioned Spike leaving on special assignment last month, and yesterday I heard something’s weird with the hatchings, so I figur—”

“The news didn’t mention anything about a magic drain.”

“Neither did I. You did.” Under the glow of the talisman, Cozy Glow’s concerned frown curled into a tiny smile. “I had a pretty good guess though, huh?” She turned toward the east, gaze sharp and curious. “A drain… that is interesting.”

A raspy growl rolled in the griffon’s chest. “You’d know all about that sort of thing, wouldn’t you, Cozy?”

“Why, you say that as if I’ve got something to do with it.” She patted the golden amulet hung over her heart. “Sorry, I don’t. Like I said, yesterday’s the first I heard of it. What could I do with dragon magic, anyway?” The white cape fluttered at her side. “I can barely use my own. My siphon spell happened forever ago. You’ve got to stop living in the past, Gallus.”

“You first, kid.” Old powerful wings arched over Gallus’s wiry frame and thin coat. “You’ve been gnawing old bones from the second you got out. Our poor little filly who tried to conquer Equestria twice and got a slap on the wrist. One bad thing happens to you and suddenly it’s everyone else’s problem.” He side-eyed the cape, unimpressed. Under his breath, he grumbled, “…did it to yourself, anyway.”

Oh, Sun. Twilight looked from Gallus to the offended—but not outraged—Primaries to the curious line of press ponies gathered a respectful distance away. She waited a moment. Another.

No gasps. No shouts. No stunned silences. None of them had heard. Deep calming breaths. Okay, good. Good, good, good, it’s fine. We’re fine.

After all, Cozy had aced her recovery program. She had graduated anger management classes and still attended sessions with Doctor Evergreen. Most of all, Cozy understood the importance of restraint on the public stage. She valued control in everything, but in herself most of all.

Then, Twilight looked down.

Cozy Glow stood stiff as death. Her eyes burned so bright they washed her blue curls green.

None of that restraint meant a thing under a truth talisman.

“Excuse me?” The whisper stuttered, caught in her throat. A thin wheeze of raw emotion.

The princess scrambled for damage control. “It’s getting heated. Before things get out of hoof, let’s take a moment to—”

“No. It’s fine.” Her barrel heaved hard. “We wanted honesty, and Captain Gallus is honest. He thinks…” She tried to laugh, but only managed a broken cough. Cozy threw back the cape.

Flashbulbs went wild. The Primaries recoiled, and Captain Gallus went pale.

Twilight didn’t blame him. Until today, few here had seen it. Not up close, not in full.

A gnarl of broken stone jutted from Cozy’s withers, ragged like a puzzle piece where the petrified wing bone had snapped. At the wing’s root, stiff dark veins branched through her chest. A gray sickly network of arteries, lung tissue, and muscle. The origin of the name Pegasi whispered in sympathy and Unicorns spat as a curse. Cozy Glow the Stonehearted.

"Hear that, flock?" Cozy's breath scraped in a powdery wheeze. "He thinks I did this to myself."

Once upon a time, Princess Twilight held the promise of a clean recovery. A smooth integration back into society, bolstered by therapy and healing discussions as a troubled filly grew into the pony she was always meant to be.

And then Cozy Glow broke out a year early. Alone.

"Cozy, I know how—"

"Don't you dare finish that sentence, Twilight Sparkle. You fell asleep for fifteen minutes under a cockatrice glare and got to wake up. You do NOT know. You have no idea. It's drowning in reverse. It's hearing your body snap in half and rock crumbling into blood, and it's granite in your chest, and almost bleeding to death in your garden, but you don't know that. You CAN'T know that, because you weren't there.” The remaining wing clapped hard against her side. “You left me to die.”

The talisman burned against Twilight’s coat. She ignored it, and trod lightly. Another emotional outburst got them nowhere. When she spoke, her words fell clear and calm. “What happened to you was an accident.” Sun Above, she hoped so. Anything else meant… she didn’t want to think of the possibilities. “You’re right. Somecreature should have been there in the gardens in case something happened.”

Even in the riots, with all hooves and claws on deck, Twilight should have taken a moment to assign statue duty. She felt so stupid. It was so obvious in retrospect. A third of that petrification spell had been chaos magic. So close to the end of Cozy’s sentence, with the magic at its weakest, of course the riots would trigger a spellbreak.

Twilight should have known. She could have stopped it—stopped ALL of this before it started. “But Cozy, if you hadn’t run away, we could have reversed the spell properly and found a doctor to reattach the wing in time.”

She'd skipped from a staredown by Equestria's finest to waking up scared, alone, and in the worst pain of her short life. All while a riot raged in the background. Of course Cozy had fled. Who wouldn’t?

Twilight should have known. Everypony knew when the sentence ended. She should have increased security and laid precautionary tracking spells around the statue. But she didn’t. “Cozy, I never wanted any of this to happen to you. I’m so—if only you’d have let me help you…”

With a snort, Cozy let her cape fall back into place. “You’ve helped enough.”

Gallus caught Twilight’s eye. He mouthed a tiny apology, and the poor thing looked so ashamed, she wished she could break composure and wrap her wings around him. If the worst happened and the separatist factions made good on their threats, he’d never forgive himself.

Twilight nodded back to him and gently flicked his claw with her tail. He’d made a mistake, but tried to do his best. That’s all she could ask of anyone.

“What’re you so sad about, Sparkle? I’m the one who lost a wing. Sheesh, you act like my whole life collapsed just because you weren’t around. Everything’s not about you and your dumb clique.” The game had ended. No deflections. No parries. The talisman burned through Cozy’s filters and reserves like a tinderbox. “I did have ponies there for me. I had Drift, Echo, Fluff, Cold Snap, Glitter, all of them.” She looked up at the halo of bodies above her. “When I lost my wing, The Primaries—my own kind—offered theirs.”

Mistral Drift bent his head to her, and the others followed suit. The Pegasi held each other’s gaze. Not leader and followers, nor commander and soldiers, but something else. Something Twilight knew well.

“It’s kind of ironic.” Cozy jammed herself back into the rhythm of political rapport the way one might squeeze ice cream through a straw. “I keep making friends, and you keep getting mad about it.”

Princess Twilight’s head jolted up, ears high.

“Yeah, you heard me. It’s almost like ‘reformed’ creatures are only allowed to have the friends you want them to have. Or maybe that’s just the ones who are useful to you.”

“You ‘keep’ making friends, you said.” Twilight stepped closer, ignoring the nervous flutter of ponies around her. “You had friends before?”

Cozy’s smile plummeted. “Uh. That’s not—” The talisman glowed. “I-I mean—” Glowed brighter. “I…” Tears gleamed in the corner of her eyes. She braced on the stone and tried to inhale.

This had gone far enough.

Twilight kneeled to whisper in Cozy’s flattened ear. “Do you want to stop?”

She shook her head. “I’m not a coward.”

“In that case…” Twilight took in her surroundings: media, observers, allies and opposition for both parties, and an endless potential for political fallout. It didn’t matter. This mare needed help. “In that case, would you like to move this discussion indoors? Privately?”

“I… yeah. Yeah, okay.” Cozy shook herself off and cleared her throat. “We decided to take it inside.” She raised her wing as the Primaries moved for the door. “Us two. Alone.”

Mistral Drift dropped to the ground. “What?! But Cozy—”

“I know what I’m doing, Drift. You trust me, right?”

“You know I do.”

Cozy patted his side. “Then keep doing that. If one of us dies, you’ll know who did it.” She opened the sliding glass door and motioned Twilight inside. “You’re the guest.”

“Thank you.” With one last reassuring nod to Gallus, Twilight stepped in.

The patio fed into an atrium that at once felt immense and snug, with the tall ceilings and limited floor space typical of Pegasus homes. Skylights domed the arched marble hollow, a living room centerpiece rooting three stories, five hallways, and a sprawling collection of cloud stairs. Tufts of cloud free-roamed at all levels. Even flightless, a Pegasus could climb bottom to top in minutes.

A circular sofa large enough to seat a dozen ponies dominated the center of the room; the dozing sighthound in the middle still managed to hog all of it. On its back, neck falling off the couch and all four feet in the air, Twilight guessed it stood a head taller than most ponies. It opened one black eye, yawned a long narrow triangle of a mouth, and went back to sleep.

Cozy rubbed his shaggy ear on her way to the bookshelf. “That’s Castle. Like the move, not the building. Don’t open that skylight. It’ll storm soon, and if he gets into those clouds, I’ll never catch him.”

Twilight blinked. “The clouds?” She looked again at the shaggy white fur, long snout, and a rump propped by tufts of cumulus. “How did you find a stratushound? These went extinct moons ago.”

“Not in New Tambelon. Mister Scorpan breeds them, and he let me have this one because he can't hunt rocs. He’s even worse at guarding.” She came away holding a velvet chess case, rubbing the stony veins in her neck. “It’s fine. He’s big enough to scare most ponies away, and I win enough trophies for the both of us.”

Indeed, dozens of chess awards ran along the west wall, ranging from international championships to school district tournaments. Above them, Cozy had hung lines of framed newspapers, magazine covers, and articles about herself. A five decade timeline of public opinion ran from ‘06’s “Equestria’s Greatest Monsters Revealed” to “We Need To Talk About Cozy Glow” in ‘34, to this year’s “One Wing, Still Soaring: The Martyr Of Mount Zephyr Speaks Out”.

Above it all hung the infamous photo of the memorial placed beneath the Terrible Trio statue. A bouquet of flowers lay alongside hundreds of primary feathers staked into the ground. On the statue itself, broken eggs and old fruit rotted in the sun. That photo won the Muleitzer and, arguably, Cozy’s early freedom.

Cozy Glow glanced up from the mouth of a colossal fireplace. Her horseshoe sparked the flint starter, and the hearth roared to life in seconds. Orange light washed across the pale walls and threw the one-winged shadow across the floor. “I didn’t really want to frame that Premier from ‘53, but it felt weird not having a full set.”

“The first interview after your return, right?”

“And all they wanted to talk about was me getting petrified.” The shadow’s wing flexed in a sharp fan of muscle and feathers, and pulled the case closer. “So stupid. As if I’d been conscious for more than five seconds of it.”

“I read that one,” Twilight said. “You said that you thought of your mom when it happened.”

Cozy settled at a coffee table and unfurled a satin cloth, careful to smooth all the wrinkles. Satisfied, she opened the velvet case and pulled out an onyx chessboard. “I did? Huh.” Her hoof skimmed the board’s chipped corner. “I don’t remember saying that. Sounds about right.”

Twilight recalled a similar chess set from Crystal Pathways Rehabilitation Center. It, too, had a chipped corner. “Was that true?”

Shifting under the talisman’s glow, Cozy shook sweat off her nose. “Sort of. I remembered something she told me about how ponies used to celebrate Hearth's Warming Eve. She said if a foal had been naughty that year, they didn’t get any presents. Instead, they got wood.” She set the first pieces in place: two queens on opposite squares. “A block of petrified wood.”

Twilight’s father once told her the same thing. He’d also told her the tradition fell out of favor some years later. Ponies didn’t like it anymore. They called it cruel.

Knights and pawns and rooks and kings found their place upon the board, each piece perfectly centered in their square. The staggered wheeze of Cozy Glow’s lungs quieted, and the light came back to her eyes. That sacred quiet of focus fell upon her softly, a state Twilight rarely had the privilege of seeing, and she hated to interrupt it.

Still, she had to. “Are you feeling any better?”

When the green glow lit Cozy’s eyes, it highlighted but didn’t engulf the way it had on the patio. Good. “You didn’t tell me it was going to hurt. I know it’s supposed to get the truth out, but not… not like that. Not so…”

“Honest?”

“Bare. If you weren’t Twilight Sparkle, I’d think you tricked me.” She stroked a wet stripe on her cape. “ Do sweat stains come out of silk? This is my favorite one.”

“I tried to tell you it was a bad idea.” Not entirely Cozy’s fault, to be fair. Paranoia from both sides’ allies pushed the idea and Cozy, ever the opportunist, ran with it. “The talisman’s like holding your breath. Do it for too long, and you might pass out. You might get around it for a while, but not forever.”

It also meant that nothing she’d said this morning could be disregarded. Even leveraged for clout, even with the edges snipped off, nothing said could be untrue. Besides, not even Cozy could fake a hurt that raw. For perhaps the first time ever, Twilight knew where the two of them stood for certain. With solid ground beneath their hooves, finally, they might walk back to Harmony.

“I’m sorry for the way you came back, Cozy. Truly.”

“I don’t care.” She readjusted a pawn. “It doesn’t change anything, and doesn’t make me feel any better than the last time you apologized. I mean, it’s not like you can do anything about it. Time travel’s a total garbage chute, and you’re still closed to my ‘Serve Discord’s Head On A Silver Platter’ proposition.” Her chin lifted from the board, one ear tilted. “…Unless?”

“Discord says he’s more of a paper plate guy.” Twilight gritted her teeth. “That was inappropriate, I didn’t mean—”

“Twilight. You’re boring me.” Cozy spread her hoof over the chess set. “I thought you’d take the hint, but apparently I have to spell it out: Are you gonna play me or not?”

“Oh. Well, I…” She rubbed the back of her neck and cleared her throat. “I… don’t think you want me to. I’m not very good.” The talisman glowed. “Terrible, actually. I lost to Flurry Heart in fifteen minutes and she went easy on me.”

A small frown crossed the young mare’s face. “Yeah, but Flurry’s pretty good, though.”

“She sure is. I know chess fairly well—well enough to know she gave me every chance to turn the game around—but understanding the game isn’t the same as playing it.”

Scratches and scuffs crisscrossed the board. Not one piece had escaped without battle scars, not even the taped-up hourglass. It may have been the most beloved object in the entire house. Twilight couldn’t insult a board like this with a bad game.

“Thank you for the offer, but trust me, Cozy, you wouldn’t have fun. Chess is more Celestia’s thing.” Twilight watched a small multicolor tumbleweed of feathers and dog hair roll past her hooves to bump into a marble bookcase.

Cozy considered Twilight’s expression, glanced between her and the shelves, and sighed. “Go ahead, but put everything back where you found it. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, though.”

Absolutely untrue. Even if Twilight had read the same text, that did not make them the same book. Different editions, different readers, and the constant ebb and flow of different experiences meant one never quite read the same book twice.

The top shelf bulged with texts of arcane theory, including some Star Swirl essay collections, the complete Ancient Magic & Modern Earth series, and Sky Dancer’s Essential Stormsmith Grimoire. The majority of shelf space had been claimed by magical texts written by other species in every language. The bottom shelf held a mix of novels, chess strategy, foreign dictionaries, political theory, and Yoga For Muscle Recovery Vol. II. As for the middle shelf…

Twilight stepped closer, mouth dry and chest tight. No, Princess Twilight Sparkle was no Princess Celestia. She didn’t plan twenty moves ahead, she just mapped twenty-point spreadsheets. Likewise, she boasted no skill for divination or visions. Still, her gut knew a sign when it saw one.

Only two books sat on the middle shelf: The Guardians Of Harmony’s Journal Of Friendship and Boysenberry Dish’s The Student In Stone. Seminal works that changed the world.

Like the other shelves, this one wasn’t organized by author, title, genre, or Dewdrop’s decimal system. Twilight’s frontal cortex knew it had no system at all. Her heart feared it had been organized by theme: the best and worst of Princess Twilight Sparkle. She could hear the historians now: “Here, class, we must note the irony that Princess Twilight’s brief reign began and ended with a book. Her friends would call such thoughts “Twilighting”: spinning one’s wheels with disaster scenarios that would never come pass. Hopefully.

“Is this a new edition?” Lighting her horn, Twilight drew out Student In Stone to inspect the thirtieth anniversary sticker pasted on front. Why couldn’t publishers print subtitles instead of ruining a perfectly good cover? The hardback lurched in her magic field, stuttering and jolting like a foal’s first levitation spell.

Cozy perched on the back of the couch. “They sent me an early copy. I wrote one of those introductory things.”

“A foreword.”

“Right, that. The real anniversary’s in two months or something.”

“Three. Dinky Doo helped research this book, you know.” Twilight flipped to the contributors' page as the hardback sank through her magic. It felt like trying to grab a slimy bowling ball. Every time she got a grip, it slipped again.

“Really? Gosh, when she comes to Cloudsdale for the funeral, I’ll need to thank her. Cold Snap says Dinky’s the one who did all that digging at my old academy.” Her gaze followed the book’s wobbly trajectory. “She’s got connections to one of those rich old Earth Pony families. Same family as my old magic tutor, I think.” Cozy propped her chin with a forehoof, back legs casually waving in the air. “Speaking of magic, you uh. Seem to be having some trouble, there.” She grinned.

The book plopped back on the shelf.

“What is this? It feels like a dampener.”

“Pretty great, huh? That’s my new safety feature.” Cozy bounced with a wicked little giggle. “Just let those nosey old Northstars try and sneak in now! I knew it’d be tough, but if it slowed you down, any other Unicorn’ll be fresh out of luck.”

They’d stay out of luck, too. Judging by the resistance, the poor soul who tried magic here would be hollow-horned for an hour, at least. Cozy had put down something far more complex than a simple null barrier, rock solid and stickier than a glue trap.

Twilight squinted through billows of shifting clouds. Nothing glowed, shone, or pulsed that she could see. Could it be behind a wall? “Alright, Cozy, I give up. How are you doing this? Nothing’s been cast, crystals hate growing in marble, and…” She frowned. “Are you using an artifact?”

“That would have been a lot easier, but I’m not allowed around those anymore thanks to somepony. I built this myself—right into the house!” Cozy took a skipping jump into a cumulus drift and rode it to the bookcase. “The real trick’s making it stick to the stone and the clouds, since the clouds are magic too, but once I isolated the arcana phenotype, it fell together. It’s a dense refinement of my old siphon spell. Smaller range and effect, and only attacks—”

“Active magic,” Twilight finished. “It activates when somepony uses their horn.”

Cozy Glow beamed ear to ear. “Yep! All legal, too, since it’s only in my own house. Unicorns can walk on all the other clouds, but not in this house. Not unless I say so. Fluffalove says it’s the safest place in Cloudsdale.”

A fortress against Unicorn magic, in other words. If it had been built into the house, then it had been functional for roughly two years. That likely meant it didn’t require maintenance or boosters because it only activated when somepony lit their horn, minimizing any risk of depletion or burnout. This would run independently until the house was demolished (maybe) or somepony deactivated it.

Between the elegant efficiency of the spell and the implications behind installing it in the first place, Twilight didn’t know if she ought to be impressed or horrified. “This is… fascinating, Cozy.” A good honest adjective that offered credit without pumping up the ego too much. “I’d love to see your notes for this. It’s an intricate locus spell, especially for—”

The cloud lazed past Twilight’s withers. Cozy rolled on her back, staring Twilight in the face. “A Pegasus?”

She met her gaze evenly. “For somepony self-taught. Or I presume so. Silver Chalice taught the basics, but I assume anything more advanced would have been Earth-based.”

Cozy’s little cloud drifted up, over, and around Twilight’s head. Green glowed through the bottom like a will-o’-wisp. “I had some help, but I learned most of it myself. I mean, it’s not hard. I can read, and all the books are right there. A spell is a spell.” The cape pulled tight over her withers. “Even if you cast it different. How else was I supposed to learn it? It’s not like they’d let me into Celestia’s School For Gifted Unicorns.”

Not without significant backing, anyway. In Cozy’s day, non-Unicorn attendees came few, but not at all unheard of. After taking over the school, Twilight had checked the CSGU records. Professor Chalice actually had sent a letter of recommendation to the E.E.A. for magic scholarship, twice. Twice it had been denied. Whether that had been due to a lack of Unicorn recommendations or the bad blood between Chalice and Neighsay remained to be seen.

Until the day he died, Neighsay maintained that keeping Cozy Glow out of magic school had been the best decision of his career, for “who could imagine how lethal she’d be with a real magical education?” Twilight wished Cozy had been admitted the moment she’d shown talent for it. The first course at every level was Ethics of Spellcraft.

“Things have changed since you’ve been gone,” Twilight told her. “More than Unicorns attend magic schools now.” The cloud drifted beneath Twilight’s chest. She reached to anchor it, her hoof a respectful distance away from Cozy’s, but still close enough to take. “If you reapplied, maybe dialed down the megalomania a little, I’m positive you’d get in.”

Cozy watched the vapor swirl around Twilight’s gilded hoof. “Oh sure, I’ve got your attention now, after I went full supervillain and almost took down Equestria twice.”

The long arc of Twilight Sparkle’s neck bent to meet Cozy’s acrid stare. “I would let in that talented little filly from Baltimare, too.”

“Sorry. You missed her by a few decades.” She dropped through the cloud. The clack of horseshoes on stone echoed high into the ceiling. “If you ask me, she dodged a bolt on that front. You’ve got enough Luster Dawns to pawn off; I’ll stick with being a rook.”

Castle slipped off the couch to pad after Cozy as she prowled across the atrium, threading through pillow piles and soft benches. The distinctive smell of burnt oats wafted from a kitchen down one of the halls. How many ponies lived here? Were they all Primaries, or simply other Pegasus associates who came and went? Cozy collected new allies faster than Applejack harvested an orchard. Combined with such a penchant for magic, her potential was immense. What if that potential had been fostered from the start? Who else had slipped through the cracks?

“There are other schools besides mine, you know. You could get a lot from a focused study at any of the magical colleges outside Equestria. I know Abyssinia, for one, has an amazing program.”

Dark clouds rumbled above the skylight. The storm from the factory district had finally caught up to them. Cozy listened to rain patter against the skylight and leaned against Castle, ruffling her dog’s silky coat. “I did hear something about that when I played internationals in Panthera. I thought about it, but… I dunno.”

“Opportunities are everywhere if you let yourself see them,” Twilight said.

“Hm.” Cozy stared into the fireplace and twitched her ears. “There are no walls, only doors you haven’t made yet.”

It sounded like a quote, though Twilight couldn’t say who. “Where did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That saying about walls and doors. Did you come up with that yourself, or did you read it somewhere? I like it.”

Cozy stiffened against the talisman’s pull. “It’s just… something I heard. From someone else. That I met.” She blinked hard and coughed into her hoof. Castle nosed her mane and whined. “Speaking of magic and spells, Twilight, are those dragon eggs being drained with the embryos inside? Like right about to crack?”

A nerve had been touched. Something too volatile to chase right now, but if it’d made Cozy pivot to the third biggest crisis on Twilight’s plate that hard that fast, it had to be major. The Map didn’t summon her often these days, but this friendship problem screamed louder than a Wonderbolt’s mayday. They’d table it for now.

“Most of the eggs are, yes. The hatchlings come out pale and weak… if at all.” At first, they’d lived for months. Then weeks. Days. Mortality rates ranged in the seventy-percents, and she had the feeling those reports were rounded down. “The Dragonlord’s called for a quarantine. Why? Any theories?”

Cozy huffed. “Not really. The Dragonlands must have predators nobody’s heard of or…” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Actually. You ever hear of something called a dragonstone?”

Maud had written a dissertation on it in ‘28. Her colleagues accused the paper of promoting sensationalism over hard science, and Twilight couldn’t fully blame them. The dragonstone was a metaphor. A story to scare baby dragons into bed. The dragonstone was not real. The same way The Mare In The Moon wasn’t real.

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “What do you know about it, Cozy?”

“Look, dealing with magical artifacts, there’s dangerous-crazy and then there’s crazy-crazy.” She tossed an extra log on the fire, and smiled when the embers flared. “I once mentioned it to… someone I used to know. Someone I respected, and who didn’t scare easy.” Cozy breathed slowly and deliberately against the talisman, eyes on the fireplace. “The way he reacted when I mentioned it? Pretty sure the dragonstone is crazy-crazy. If anyone has it, I’m glad I’m not a dragon right now.”

In other words, Grogar’s Bell levels of danger. With no clue who might be using it. Wonderful. “I admit, I’m surprised you’re so ready to help the dragons, considering what happened outside with Gallus.”

“I don’t care about dragons. I just like a puzzle.” She smirked. “Still hate Gallus’s ugly old guts though, and I’m pretty sure the feeling’s mutual. The way he looked at me, you’d think he’s still stewing on that stuff I said in the library that one time.” Cozy sat up to look back at her. Her eyes widened as the smirk swelled into a grin. “Wait... does he?”

Twilight glared at her.

“Ohmygosh, he does! Hah! That dork, doesn’t he know I was just messing with his head? Golly, if I knew I’d mess him up that bad without even trying, I would’ve brought my A-game.” Cozy Glow giggled—a sugary sound laced with broken glass. A teenager delighting in petty cruelty. Somepony ready and willing to hurt others for the sheer fun of it.

The laughter faded. Raindrops splattered and hissed on the stone outside as the fires popped and crackled. The dog licked his nose and began to fidget.

Twilight Sparkle blinked slowly. “You think that’s funny, do you?”

“Are you kidding?” The talisman flared as another snicker squeezed between her teeth. “This is the funniest thing since Flurry Heart crashed into that diplomat’s cake.”

Castle’s ears drew back. He retreated behind Cozy, watching Twilight with his belly to the floor.

“Hm. I have to wonder” Her ethereal tail flicked, casting little twinkles across the marble. “Was pushing the Unicorns out of Cloudsdale also funny? Or that rally in Sire’s Hollow? The pamphlets, the radio shows, the fly-only zones, this… this entire movement, this spiteful thing you’ve built around yourself. Is all that a joke to you as well, Cozy Glow?” The great arc of Princess Twilight’s wings curved across the sofa, the fireplace, the Pegasus, and all her trophies. They stood at opposite ends of the room; it didn’t matter. Twilight loomed over all of it. “Do you truly believe in any of this? Or are you playing around as an excuse for revenge?”

“Maybe I like to multitask.” Cozy clicked her tongue and petted the whining dog at her side. “You’re so serious, gosh.”

“Cozy.”

Tiny sparks cracked under her horseshoe as Cozy pawed at the marble. The good wing twitched and stretched over her cutie mark. “Alright. I believe that whenever Unicorns see the other tribes use magic, they’ll use any excuse to not call it magic. It’s always ‘cheating’ or ‘an exception’ or ‘natural talents’ that don’t count because walking on clouds isn’t magic when we do it. Excuse me if maybe I don’t exactly ‘feel comfortable’ around them sometimes. Not everypony appreciates my spell circle ‘novelties’. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s getting tense out there.”

Outside, a miserable collection of reporters and photographers sheltered under umbrellas as rain battered the mountain. The awning provided drier refuge, but they’d need to share the space for that.

Twilight couldn’t help an ironic chuckle. “It’s hard to miss.” In a single wing stroke, she closed the distance and landed beside Cozy at the fireplace. “I’ve also noticed that you and The Primaries have ignored every invitation to Canterlot’s friendship forums to discuss these issues with the other tribes.”

Cozy frowned up at the wing longer than her entire body. “Equestria’s already had twelve centuries to talk it out.”

“Project Northstar and Cornerstone Conglomerate have already agreed to a sit-down.” Thanks to a six-month endeavor with her very best ponies and Spike on the job. Without all three tribes, without an even split that showed all sides’ willingness to try… “At the very least, you could share a table for a few hours.”

“Northstar’s leader sent me death threats!”

“Remind me,” asked Twilight, “was this before or after Fissile Whistle dropped his sister three miles into the sky?”

“Allegedly. Besides, she didn’t get hurt, if indeed such a thing allegedly happened. Besides, Project Northstar started the whole thing and they know it. Right, Castle?”

Castle wagged the plume of his tail and let Twilight pet his haunch.

“It’s like I said outside: we don’t think we’re better than them.” She crossed her hooves over the glowing talisman. “Okay, so maybe I do, but that’s because I’m literally a genius and adorable. It’s not a tribal thing.”

“You’d do better saying this at the forums than to me. Or the press.” Twilight wondered if the villa’s locus spell had jurisdiction over the patio. Those wet ponies could use a shield for all that rain.

Cozy Glow snorted, though her small size made it more of a sneeze. “This was your plan all along, wasn’t it? You say it’s all about poor Dinky and her dead mommy, but really it’s all about getting me to the forums.”

“You’re not the only one who can multitask. Come on, Cozy, it’s one day out of your schedule at the safest place in Equestria. Why can’t you at least try?”

“They’re just looking for a scapegoat. Ponies act like I invented tribalism overnight.” The cape brushed aside as Cozy rubbed the gnarled gray veins at her collarbone. Firelight turned the silk a glistening sunset orange. “The Primary Movement revived while I still had pigeons pooping on my ears, and it existed for like two decades before that. Where was I when the riots started? Stone. Where was I when Flower Wishes got blasted through the jaw by Unicorn magic? Stone. Where was I when Princess Platinum took the sun for two weeks, or when Puddinghead said the other tribes could starve to death? It comes over and over, like ponypox.”

“That’s all true, but you weren’t stone when the Pegasi all evacuated to Cloudsdale, or when the Windigos returned. You’re still part of this.” Twilight examined an overhead mantle, where silver garlands looped around a snowglobe of Mt. Everhoof. “Also, we cured ponypox in ‘38.”

“I know where you’re going with this: Harmony wins in the end, right?”

Not precisely where Twilight had been headed, but it did lean in that direction.

Cozy spread her wing to the collection of chess sets: crystal, wood, onyx, glass, and metal. Some traditional, some ornate, and some made to push Power Ponies merchandise. “No matter who wins, the same pieces go back in the same box. Even if pieces look different for different sets, they don’t change. The board doesn’t change. Players change.” She glanced at the taped hourglass beside the onyx board. “I’m back in the game, and I don’t let any piece go to waste.”

It was way too early in the morning for chess metaphors. “This isn’t a game, Cozy.”

“It’s always a game.”

Twilight Sparkle took a deep breath. Held it tight. Let it out.

“Understand this, right here and now: pieces come back; ponies do not. Flower Wishes is still in intensive care, and she’s not going to get better.”

Her heart sank in her chest. Truth had slunk from Twilight’s mouth when she wasn’t looking, and it understood the evidence of medical reports faster than her brain could deny it. Flower Wishes, catalyst of the Market Riots, the charred broken face that sent Equestria running back to the safety of their tribes, the sweet mare who sold marigolds at a librarian discount, and loved Nightmare Night despite getting spooked every other day of the year… was going to die. Soon.

Twilight’s friend was dying. And all she could think of, even now, was what it meant for Equestria. What it meant politically. She felt sick.

“I do not want anything like Flower’s incident to happen again, and on the course you’re flying, Cozy, it will. Ponies get hurt. Ponies die. That’s what happens if these groups can’t come to an understanding—somepony else dies.” Twilight stretched her wing to the skylight, where Mistral Drift and Captain Gallus watched them in a brittle truce. Their fur and feathers hung dripping wet, though neither noticed nor cared. Winged silhouettes framed the skylight’s edges, packed shoulder to shoulder. “Think of what might happen to Cold Snap, or Mistral Drift—or you! You can’t come back from petrification just to die all over again.”

Quietly, Cozy Glow studied the ponies above them. “I never thought of it like that. Talk about a record. First pony to get martyred twice in their lifetime.” Her voice trembled in wonder. Absolutely besotted. “Wow. I’d live forever.”

“And the rest? What about them? What do you think they’ll do without you?”

Cozy put her head on her forelegs and turned away.

Twilight edged closer. “I saw you out there, Cozy. The Primaries—your Primaries—mean something to you, and not just as a political faction or some means to an end. You care about them.” She dared another glance at Mistral Drift, who looked ten minutes from a classic Shy-family anxiety attack. “I should apologize. This whole time I thought—” With a sigh, she ran her hoof over the talisman. “…I wanted to think they were nothing but lackeys or henchponies to you.”

Storm clouds cradled the house on all sides, save for the atrium’s hearth splitting the dark. Embers floated as the flames bent, fluttered, and shrank like a living creature. Cozy Glow pulled her tail close and watched. When she brought her head up, the deep pink of her eyes stared sunken and haunted. “I did, too. Until about an hour ago, I… I did, too.” It was the second time Twilight had ever seen Cozy truly frightened.

“You do realize that’s a good thing, right?” If she didn’t think the Pegasus might try to break her jaw, Twilight would have offered a hug. A gentle smile would suffice.

“It snuck up on me. I didn’t mean to.” Cozy sighed. “Still dunno how it happened last time, either.”

Alright, here we go. “You mean with your old friends? The ones you mentioned before?” Take it slow. Don’t spook her again. This is where it all comes together.

“Doesn’t matter. It…” Her ears pinned flat. “There’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

“How do you know?”

“Because,” Cozy said, “my friends are in the restricted area of your garden.”

Oh. Twilight’s wings flopped like a wet mop. “Lord Tirek,” she said to the wall. “Your friends were Queen Chrysalis and Lord Tirek. Cozy, you can’t be—”

Lashing her tail, Cozy sniffed hard and hunched her shoulders. “I knew you wouldn’t get it.”

“I’m not dismissing you, but I admit I’m a little lost.”

Twilight’s brain ran frenzied recaps of every interaction she’d seen between those three. Insults. Disdain. Arguments. At each other’s throats at the drop of a pin, they’d barely seemed to tolerate each other. The closest thing to friendship she remembered was some shared warmth in victory. Did that count? It felt like it should count. It’d been hard to tell with that blast spell smoldering five inches from her face.

“You know they would have killed you the second you stopped being useful to them, right?”

Cozy raided a eyebrow. “Yeah, and? It went both ways. Tirek thought I planned to kill him in his sleep, which is insane. I’m obviously about poisons. Look at me; you really think I can take down a juiced-up Tirek by myself?” A thin smile eased across her muzzle. “It’s sweet that he thought I’d be capable of it. He had a funny way of encouraging me by accident. But yeah, we totally would have murdered each other at the end. Probably when one of us went up a power level, I dunno.” The smile widened. “Or maybe we could’ve stayed allies and crushed Equestria under our hooves for a thousand years. I dunno, I liked it.”

More like they’d have frozen to death in a month at the rate those Windigos were howling. Star Swirl had theorized that the reason they’d sprung up so fast hadn’t only been tribal hostilities, but three sources of powerful magic bearing three wells of hatred. At the time, Twilight believed him. Now she wasn’t so sure.

Regardless of who fed the Windigos the most, those three had put in their share—it had radiated from them. They couldn’t have emptied it all on Canterlot, nor on Twilight’s friends. Hatred ate its own tail and didn’t stop until it had no tail left. They would have killed each other. Maybe they’d have felt bad about it afterward, but if regret raised the dead, the graveyards would be empty.

“I understand that it meant something important to you, but you must understand that what you three had, that wasn’t a—” Twilight bit off the word “real” before it poisoned the conversation. Besides, she had no right to determine this friendship’s authenticity. Not this soon, not with her personal biases, and certainly not when saying so belittled the pony in front of her. “—a healthy friendship.”

“I don’t care!” Cozy snapped. “It was MY friendship. I never said anything about being healthy, I said I liked it. We shared the same cloud.” She sneered at Twilight's expression. “Newsflash: villains don’t hug things out. We couldn’t stand each other sometimes, but we still had respect. They didn’t care about my tribe or about my age, they cared what I could do, and I didn’t—” Cozy stomped the tile hard. “I didn’t know how much it mattered until after I broke out. I can’t forget, even if I wanted to.” Cozy’s hoof brushed the granite veins threading across her soft pink coat. “They’re literally part of me now. Sometimes my whole body hurts and I miss them so much, and it’s stupid because nobody can DO anything about it.” She swallowed hard and rubbed her eyes. “They’re not gonna make me cry in front of Twilight Sparkle either. Stop staring like you feel sorry for me.”

“I do.” Twilight’s wings flopped in a sloppy shrug. “What do you want from me? I care about other ponies; it’s kind of what I do. I don’t like seeing you suffer.”

“So? You’re not going to do anything about it. You won’t let them come back.”

“No”, Twilight sighed. “Not yet, anyway. We only freed you because—”

“Equestria made you do it.” That arrogant smirk came back.

“Because the councils judged you’re not an immediate threat.”

Cozy laughed without laughter. “Right. You’re only a threat if you’ve got a horn. I almost forgot.”

To be a threat, one needed power. Or respect. The venn-diagram of those factors became a circle for some ponies. “You don’t need to be a threat to matter. What I told you all those years ago is still true: friendship’s powerful, but power isn’t why you make friends.” Twilight spread her hoof to the atrium, the house, the mountain it sat upon. “Even if you never went into politics or tried to conquer Equestria or won national championships, you would still matter to somepony somewhere. They’d miss you when you were gone.”

Castle rested his chin on Cozy’s head and licked her ear. She covered her stony wing stub with her cape, leaning into his furry chest. “The city buried my mom like old roadapples when she was gone. Nopony remembered her. Not her ‘friends’ from work, and certainly not Svengallop.”

“You did,” Twilight offered.

“And now everypony thinks of her like some secret puzzle piece to my evil soul or some garbage.” Cozy’s lip curled in a bitter sneer. “As if I did all this ‘cause of the orphan thing. Or worse—because Tirek tricked me.” She groaned and dragged her hooves down her face. “Is it that unbelievable I happen to be smart and capable and taught myself Ancient Tambelonian?”

“Sometimes ponies choose to believe what’s easy, not what’s true.” Twilight shook her head. “And they don’t always know how to handle smart young fillies. May I ask you one thing?”

Cozy waved a go-ahead.

“Why did you do it?”

Cozy Glow laughed, then. Not an ironic chuckle, not a giggle for the cameras, and not a sinister cackle. A simple honest laugh with a rasping undertow. The sound of lungs heaving with dust and granite. It sounded so… old. Like the age Cozy would have been. The age she should have been. “Well, that’s easy, Twilight. I did it because I could. I wanted to.”

“Why did you want to?”

The talisman gleamed brightly. “Sorry. That’s two things.”

She’d walked right into that one. “Very well. I’ll share something with you instead. The stone filly who got all those flower crowns and mouth-written cards on her birthday didn’t have a horn, but that never stopped anyone from loving her. They saw a scared pony. That’s it. That’s all they needed to care about you.”

The memorial photo loomed over the west wall, taller than the trophies, the articles, and the shelf of grimoires. Cozy watched the dwindling fire instead.

“Ponies cared about you even before you went to Tartarus. I wish I could’ve helped you see that, or tried harder to understand, or…” Twilight sighed long and low and sad. “I wish I’d done more for you.”

“You’re really torn up about all this, huh?” Cozy flicked her tail. “Good.”

An inlaid clock struck the hour. Their agreed meeting time ran short. Cozy tossed one last log into the fire. Weak flames kicked up, but they wouldn’t hold long. Her eyes traveled from the fireplace to the skylight and the circle of ponies that hadn’t budged an inch.

“You know what?” Her gaze slid down the wall to settle on the knot of feathers, dust, and dog hair at the foot of her bookcase. “Go ahead.”

Twilight pricked her ears. “Pardon?”

“Take the geezer’s body back to Ponyville. No dust off my wings, but it might help our optics.”

“May I ask what changed your mind?”

“No. Ask again, and I’ll change it back. I’ll tell the press we don’t have an issue with it and send Fluff to talk to the Doo family.” She rose and stretched. “There. You got what you came for; are we done?”

“Our time’s almost up so yes, I suppose we are. Thank you for this, Cozy Glow. You don’t know how much this will mean to Dinky.”

“Yeah I do.”

Yes, Twilight supposed she would. She nodded toward the hearth. “By the way, I noticed your fire’s getting low. This house is beautiful, but on a mountain next to the weather factory, it must get cold up here.”

Cozy trailed at Twilight's knee. “We get by okay. Why, you selling a furnace?”

“Actually, I’ve been thinking about something Pinkie Pie’s sister told me. Did you know that Equestrian petrified wood burns for two months straight?”

“No. What about it?” Cozy removed the truth talisman and tossed it. Midair, the necklace flashed, brilliant and blinding. When the light faded, the two halves had cleaved back into one.

“Two months after Hearth’s Warming covers the rest of winter. A foal with a block of petrified wood could stay warm until spring arrived. It guaranteed they could try and get presents next year.” Twilight dipped her head. “Thank you again for meeting me. I hope you’ll at least consider my offer to meet the other tribes.”

“No promises, but we’ll… think about it.” Cozy Glow opened the door, watching the princess step into the rain and the crowd and the galaxy of flashbulbs. “See you, Twilight.”

A flock of soaking wet Pegasi streaked past Twilight to cram into the room in a pile of feathers and questions. Cozy sighed at her wet floor, shrugged, and shut the door.

“What about the post-interview?” a Primary asked behind the glass.

Cozy Glow rolled the curtains down. “Later. Right now, let’s finish breakfast. I never did get that coffee.”

Comments

[Autumn Wind]

Patches strikes again!

I had a blast editing this, and especially the big reveal.

[SaddlesoapOpera]

11751742
Same here. Fantastic work as always, Patchwork!

[Mockingbirb]

This is certainly an interesting take on late generation 4 politics. I like how you tell a story through a conversation undertaken with complicated motives that need some teasing out by both main participants.

[Thought Prism]

I understand what you were going for here, but I couldn't suspend my disbelief behind the premise. If ponies turned their backs on the princesses so easily, Equestria would have certainly collapsed back into tribal states after Nightmare Moon was imprisoned. Especially since Luna surely had a good track record of leadership prior, unlike Cozy. The whole time as I was reading, I couldn't get over how you must have hit Twilight with the idiot ball for things to have gotten this bad in the first place.

[tigereye504]

11751813
Are we sure it didn't? The time of Luna's banishment is not one well known to the modern pony or to us viewers, prior to her return her very existence was regarded the same way we regard the Easter Bunny or Santa; fun but fictional. For all we know the nation did collapse into tribalism in Luna's absence, and the harmony we see in the show was only recovered relatively recently.

[Ciphers]

I like this so much, great work author

A gnarl of broken stone jutted from Cozy’s withers, ragged like a puzzle piece where the petrified wing bone had snapped. At the wing’s root, stiff dark veins branched through her chest. A gray sickly network of arteries, lung tissue, and muscle. The origin of the name Pegasi whispered in sympathy and Unicorns spat as a curse. Cozy Glow the Stonehearted.

That got to hurt, a lot

[Scyphi]

11751869
Maybe, but given what little we DO know about the aftermath of Luna's banishment, there's not really much evidence to suggest that. There's a reason most fans assume Celestia was still able to keep things together afterwards.

And I do kind of get Thought Prism's point here--the country's unity collapsing (at least in part) over Cozy Glow's imprisonment does seem like a rather petty and poor reason for it to have happened, after the country had already endured so much worse and came out of those instances arguably more united than it'd been going in. To say nothing of the fact that Cozy really is a poor leader to be rallying around anyway. But then again there ARE real life figures today (which I will not list by name) that I can't begin to fathom why people would want to rally around yet are anyway, so...

But that's why I still gotta give the fic mad props for just one thing--it treats Cozy as what she really is. Not some misbehaving little kid that didn't know better, but a master manipulator with deliberate villainous intentions done with real intent and full understanding of just what it was she was doing...and she did it anyway. Actions that put the whole country and every creature within it at jeopardy...all just because she wanted the power and the glory. At the end of the day, her age didn't really matter anymore (which in many ways makes it all the more tragic) and it's why I generally can't begin to take seriously anyone who says Cozy's just a kid where making her sit in the corner for a little bit was somehow, laughably, all that should've been needed to reform her. And this fic proves why thinking that about Cozy would be a terrible, terrible, mistake on their part, and only open themselves up for her to walk all over them.

It's not that I'm saying Cozy can't be reformed, nor that the punishment she got was the right one, or at least the only one, or that there isn't a valid point leveling what criticisms there are on both sides of the matter (as this fic has done)...but it's that I see Cozy for the threat she really is. She is NOT someone you want to underestimate, let alone turn your back on.

[Kiue Jin]

11751900
Something to consider is that this version of Cozy... has kind of stumbled into the first step of reformation. In the sense that she has actually managed to start caring for others.

[Scyphi]

11752020
Ehhhhh, sort of. You're not wrong, of course, but she's still doing it for the wrong reasons. That was always her biggest problem. She actually understands friendship and caring and all of that just fine, or at least far more than she gets credit for, she just keeps choosing to apply it for the wrong reasons, and usually selfish ones at that. And until she can get past it...well...

Yes, the seed's been planted. But that seed was really already there even before she went into the statue. Here, though, she acknowledged the seed's there, more genuinely than normal, so maybe that is the start of the change she needs. I just worry it's still coming too late for them all.

[xgfhj]

11751813
Take notice of the "MLP Comics" tag, also the story seems to be implying a Gen 5 tag.
11751869
Uh... no.
According to Twilight in the episode Testing Testing 1, 2, 3

Ahem. Prior to the great Celestia/Luna rift, there was no need for the Earth, Unicorn, Pegasi, or E.U.P., Guard.
But after Luna's banishment, the Protective Pony Platoons were formed. On the anniversary of the first Celestial year of peace, a celebration was held.
Headed by General Firefly, an elite team of aerial performers were chosen to help celebrate this auspicious occasion. The first performance was so full of energy, so highly charged, that magical lightning showered down on the crowd. Everypony was so filled with amazement and wonder that General Firefly dubbed them "the Wonderbolts"!

In short; the ponies rallied around Princess Celestia and created an alliance, the 'Royal Guard', and the Summer Sun Celebration and the Wonderbolts.

[protator]

11751869
There's zero evidence to support that theory.
Who knows, maybe there used to be a race of large, green carnivorous bunnies terrorizing the land until only years before the beginning of the show.
Is it reasonable to assume there were? Just because the show doesn't directly disprove every random theory one could throw together ...

Also, in a fictional story absence of proof is effectively proof of absence.
As far as FIM lore/canon, tribalism ended with the founding of EQ and the sisters taking the throne.

[protator]

Hmmm, it's unfortunate. I really wanted to like this story. I did until Cozy appeared.
In the end this entire scenario relies on everybody who isn't Cozy Glow holding the idiot ball, and you made sure Twilight would hold on to it with both hooves.
The circumstances of their meeting, the entire dialogue during their walk ... that purple pony talking with Cozy isn't Twilight Sparkle. Twilight is an intelligent mare with over half a century worth of experience in politics and public relations.
I can't even tell what's been achieved or who's been changed through the events in this story.
And what was that weird bit about a sickly Celestia? Tummy ache from too much cake?
I like your writing style, the flow of the dialogue, prose, yadayda ... but the actual plot failed to match those positive aspects.

[asdtroi8895]

This story is amazing. It simultaneously felt tense, wholesome and sad. Very great work! A super interesting take on Cozy too. I do wonder how some of the events described happened, but I guess those are meant to be vague. Always nice to see more great Cozy fics either way.

“Apologies for the language, Princess, but it was. Two counts of grand treason, four attempted assassinations, collusion with enemies of the Crown twice, at least fourteen attempted murders, and that’s not counting damage from the siphon and the Bell.”

Funny how he conveniently forgets about the lack of punishments other characters received for similarly bad deeds, and charges hardly matter when there wasn't a trial to speak of.

“I hope Zephyr Breeze is feeling better?” He still had it in him to style manes, judging by Mistral’s fancy green and white pompadour.

I wonder who he ended up marrying.

“Two hundred years of community service and an apology.””

Community service for a being who can handle any mess with a snap of his finger is hardly a punishment.

“The way I heard it, nopony turned any of the Unicorn traitors to stone.” Mistral narrowed his eyes. “Fluffalove, what happened to the Unicorn mare who led the Storm King into Canterlot?”

Very good points. No use in condemning Cozy without condemning the ones who weren't even punished for their actions.

“Alright, let’s call Svengallop a work in progress.”

A father like that could explain much.

A gnarl of broken stone jutted from Cozy’s withers, ragged like a puzzle piece where the petrified wing bone had snapped. At the wing’s root, stiff dark veins branched through her chest. A gray sickly network of arteries, lung tissue, and muscle.

Damn. That poor filly. I can only imagine how terrifying that must have been.

“The Primary Movement revived while I still had pigeons pooping on my ears, and it existed for like two decades before that. Where was I when the riots started? Stone. Where was I when Flower Wishes got blasted through the jaw by Unicorn magic? Stone. Where was I when Princess Platinum took the sun for two weeks, or when Puddinghead said the other tribes could starve to death?

This is true. Gallus earlier was willing to blame Equestria's current problems on Cozy, but she wasn't even around when they started. She may be a part of it, but none of it is her fault specifically.

“We couldn’t stand each other sometimes, but we still had respect. They didn’t care about my tribe or about my age, they cared what I could do, and I didn’t—”

Seems to me like Cozy felt a sense of belonging with them, which is something she lacked beforehand.

[PatchworkPoltergeist]

11752047
Indeed, this focuses on the time between the end of the series and G5, taking place roughly around the flashback we see in the comics. (I considered the G5 tag but because it all takes place hundreds of years before Sunny Starscout's time, that felt disingenuous)
It mainly focuses on backstory where "the earth pony that got hurt by a unicorn" which then caused internal strife among the tribes. Here, interpreted as a riot which Equestria is still reeling from. Cozy Glow is a factor in this situation, but she is far from the only one and absolutely not the biggest one. There are still two other separatist groups besides the Primaries, after all. They're just not relevant in this story because they're not led by a pony with personal beef with Twilight. (Or who are blocking a funeral)

Unity has not collapsed yet. But a number of ponies are scared, upset, and angry--Cozy Glow included--and when ponies get scared they tend to go to extremes and lash out.
Multiple times in canon, we see ponies go from zero to angry mob at the word go. This is just a case where things didn't cool down. This is also a case of a slow burn coming to a boil.
The three tribal factions (and I must emphasize three) are a vocal minority, but they are loud. And ponies, especially ponies who weren't alive the last time the tribes turned against each other, are listening. Shouting them down won't work, powering through them won't work. The only way they come back from this is to heal, but to heal, the ponies have to be willing to listen. It'll be easier to listen if she can convince the leaders of these factions to settle things amongst themselves first. So she comes to Zephyr Mountain.

[Mystic Sunrise]

11752315
And in the end, it's all for naught as Equestria collapses into G5 no matter what Twilight does. Only thing missing now is Opaline, but with the mention of Skyros, she's around here somewhere.

[Lurks-no-More]

What an excellent read! Serious, tense, worrisome, with all those hinted tie-ins to G5 deftly set up.

I'm pleased, if not surprised after Silver Standard and the various stories about the Riches, by how well you wrote Cozy here, giving her depth and weight beyond what the show had. She's extremely sharp, manipulative and bitter, but like any pony, she still has that capacity and urge for friendship, surprising not just Twilight and the reader, but herself, too. I quite enjoyed this older Twilight, too. She's recognizably herself, but changed by experience and responsibility into something a little more like Celestia.

And, to continue gushing, I loved the how much the environment of Zephyr Heights and then of Cozy's villa played part of the story. I got a feeling of this being a "real" place, which is not a small achievement; especially with places that don't even have the show visuals to draw fully upon.

11752197
Twilight notes that unlike Celestia, she doesn't do visions or foresight. I'm imagining Celestia is seeing a dark future, and has been affected by it.

11752355
Sounds like she might be meddling with the dragonstone. Anyway - it's not all for naught, if Twilight can buy some time, ease the tensions, push back the breakup between tribes for a few years or a generation or however long. Life is not teleological.

[zimmerwald1915]

11752355
Oh that's not true. Equestrian social collapse is independent of any one person, but it's state collapse was instigated by Twilight.

[Such Forbidden Colors]

This was great. The whole thing (characteristic of all your writing) felt very emotionally real, and what stood out to me was the feeling of powerlessness. Twilight wants to fix things, but the political climate is such that anything she does could be interpreted as ‘unilateral/aggressive/incendiary.’ Obviously, we know that things will keep going downhill in the long run because this seems to a bridge toward G5, but I am really glad that it had a happy(-ish) ending. Twilight’s virtues pulled through, even when all she could really do was have an honest conversation and hope for the best. I’m not sure why this comment is so focused on Twilight since obviously Cozy was interesting and well-executed, but so it goes.

I’m a bit discouraged to see so many comments stuck up about the premise. Considering you’re taking a reasonable path from G4 canon to G5 canon it seems to be totally defensible from some canon purist perspective. But then also, I’ve never recovered from the trauma that Daring Do is a real person. To enjoy MLP, I think you have to interpret as a vehicle for interesting stories more than some hyperfactual, consistent body of work. And this is exactly the kind of interesting story that makes my MLP fandom so gratifying.

[Kind of Brony]

11751813
I do find it pretty funny that Equestria collapsed in less than a century under Twilight's rule after existing for over a thousand prior.

If I had to guess a reason why though, it would be that she tried to change too much too fast. Equestria was fairly stagnant for the thousand years prior. It was just the three tribes, and they were comfortable like that. It was those three, and Celestia at the helm for lifetimes.

Then suddenly there's a new princess, Celestia is retired, and there are dozens of new species moving in next door, all in only a couple years. Twilight apparently didn't know that, while change can be good, it's always scary. Change introduces instability, which, if let to settle, can be dealt with. Too much change causes too much instability, however, which leads to collapse.

She disrupted the status quo, which is doubly risky when it's beneficial to a majority of citizens. Ponies were happy, Equestria was a near-utopian society for them, so suddenly changing stuff that's been working great for so long is going to garner some resistance. Maybe Twilight could have made Creaturequestria work eventually, if she took baby steps and let the populous adjust to each small change at their own pace.

Instead, she forced her vision of how Equestria should be down everyone's throat, and choked her own kingdom as a result.

[Daedalus Aegle]

What 11752432 said. This was a great story, and I say that as someone who's been very annoyed with the idea that Twilight must have been a complete failure as a princess to make g5 happen. I would never have chosen to write a Cozy Glow story like this, and that's fine, and this story is the best one I've read for the contest so far. Because regardless of my headcanons I firmly believe in letting people tell their stories.

Kudos to you, and best of luck in the contest.

[Thought Prism]

11752592
And this makes sense to me, too! I probably would have enjoyed this story a lot more if Cozy's Primaries were rallying to keep a bunch of dragons from moving in to Cloudsdale, or stoking renewed paranoia about changelings, citing her own relationship with Chrysalis. But instead, she's targeting unicorns and earth ponies, who have been getting along for ages by this point.

While I'm commenting again, I'd like to make it clear that I think the author executed their concept with the gripping prose and great character work I've come to expect from them. It's just that the plot itself could have used a few tweaks. I was sharing criticism because I know they're capable!

[Crusader688]

You know, I could see a scenario in this timeline where, once the sadly inevitable collapse of Equestria comes about and the tribes splinter, Cozy uses her influence with the pegasus secessionist movement to maneuver herself into a position of authority in their new society (with Fluttershy's son at her side?). And eventually this evolves into the royal family of Zephyr Heights that we see in G5. So the irony here would be that Cozy's descendants would be among the ones to bring the tribes back together and undo her (and her followers') work of breaking them apart in the first place.

I wonder if in the end Cozy would be bitter that despite her efforts the tribes will eventually reunite anyway (she wanted to shape the course of history and be remembered forever, but even her influence has limits), or relieved if she felt things had gotten out of hand and went beyond what she was intending (watching as her birth nation fell apart and pony-kind regressed to a handful of isolated city states in part because of her actions would be a lot to handle)?

[FlorenOfTerra]

I really loved how this was written. Felt so interesting seeing two smart main characters in this chess match of information and persuasion, gaining and losing and trading pieces to get closer to their respective goals. I really really like the characterizations as well, especially Cozy Glow. Such a strange and complex lil kid in such a tragic and complicated situation. And Twilight really hits that "kinda new at being an old mentor" vibe strongly, for some reason I was reminded of a middle-aged Spider-man who's past their prime physically but with years of experience that makes up for it. Her vs Cozy Glow felt a bit like a strategic mind vs a tactical mind. If only they had worked together, the Next Gen setting might have been completely different.

[PatchworkPoltergeist]

11752432

what stood out to me was the feeling of powerlessness. Twilight wants to fix things, but the political climate is such that anything she does could be interpreted as ‘unilateral/aggressive/incendiary.’ Obviously, we know that things will keep going downhill in the long run because this seems to a bridge toward G5, but I am really glad that it had a happy(-ish) ending. Twilight’s virtues pulled through, even when all she could really do was have an honest conversation and hope for the best.

That's it. That's the fic in a nutshell.

There are practically no good moves here, save the one Twilight knows best: approach at a personal level. At the end of the day, this is still a friendship problem. The other big reason Twilight's treating the Primaries specifically with kid gloves is personal guilt about Cozy specifically. That's part of how the situation got so bad in the first place, but the other reason is dismissing the Primaries' arguments as an attempt to not play the game Cozy wants her to play. She still sees a gang of rebellious teens barking at the wind (not entirely inaccurate) but that also doesn't mean they don't truly believe in what they're saying. I'm not sure if Twilight fully realizes that--the fact that some Pegasi feel truly hurt, disregarded, and disrespected--until she has that honest talk. Managing to get these gunshy volatile teens to get there in the first place is the trick.

11752368

I loved the how much the environment of Zephyr Heights and then of Cozy's villa played part of the story. I got a feeling of this being a "real" place, which is not a small achievement; especially with places that don't even have the show visuals to draw fully upon.

I'm going to just take a moment and just bask in this because I was fighting to make that villa work through the whole rough draft. I realized in the middle of writing it I had no idea what the place looked like, which threw off the whole story because I need that grounding, so I ended up building much of it backwards. That's also partly because originally Cozy and Twilight talked in an office/bedroom until I realized there is no way in Tartarus Twilight is being let anywhere near Cozy's safest place. Both for emotional reasons and because Cozy runs paranoid these days. And also probably has PTSD that she's not acknowledging.

Sounds like she might be meddling with the dragonstone.

Opaline is also what the scholars of wickedness would call crazy-crazy.

[vectorVll]

This is precisely why one pony shouldn't wield so much power, and if you're assuming I'm talking about Twilight, think again; it's opaline in the spotlight. Now, back to the main point—I adore the story. It crafts a mature and cozy atmosphere, where cozy Glow, despite not fully grasping friendship, embraces its essence without losing her original self. The narrative avoids the cliché of remorse in a redemption story, acknowledging the original reasoning that set the character on this path. Your portrayal of Twilight is refreshing; she's not a strategic mastermind but wears her heart on her sleeve. She may not be a chess player, but she's learned when to keep her cards close. What stands out even more is the depth given to the side characters—they're not mere background decorations; they have distinct stories, preferences, and dislikes. Switching to their perspective could have seamlessly driven the story forward. Additionally, your vision for the next season makes far more sense than a single pony stirring up trouble and disrupting centuries of peace, with characters seemingly losing their wits. Your approach maintains coherence and presents a logical progression.

[Wild Stallion]

11752047
Which could have been as a direct response to tribalism.

Merge the protective forces from each tribe into one to "foster growth and understanding."

It sounds like the thing Celestia would come up with.

11752405
Celestia's actions probably would've done a lot to undermine trust in the state, to be fair.

11751900
You realize that the show insisted on treating practically every villain it had like a misguided child right?

Starlight Glimmer used her magic to strip ponies of their talents and then ruled through fear over a town in misery, long after they had already accepted her as leader.

She was let off with no consequences, made Twilight's favored student and given permission to not just supervise her village, but a entire school of teenagers.

Tempest lead a invasion on her home country because she was jealous of all the abled bodied ponies walking around and she was willing to subject them to slavery and misery for a chance at having her horn back.

She was given free reign to go wherever and whenever she wanted, with no repercussions.

Discord abused and terrorized ponies long after his "reformation" and he was likewise given free reign to do whatever he wanted with special treatment on top of it.

They literally gave him a feel good nanny in Fluttershy.

So it's really no surprise why people reacted the way they did when the show that insisted on treating every reformed villain as if they were 12 years old, tried to punish a literal 12 year old as if she was 20.

Just about all late stage MLP villains are pathologically shitty people, and that very much included the reformed ones.

[Scyphi]

11755148
And you realize that argument doesn't hold all that much weight when you consider how many people complained about ALL of those villains getting off so easy though, right?

This is not something you can have both ways, people. Either treat the darn filly like a proper villain or stop complaining when other villains reform easily. It's not like all villains are universally the same anyway, much less all respond to the same attempts to reform/stop them just as universally. FiM was honestly lucky they were able to reform as many villains as they did.

I guess basically all I want the fandom to do here is to acknowledge that they're being hypocritical about this. And to not pretend Cozy was any less of a villain than the others just because she also happens to be one of the youngest--that right there is probably my biggest gripe about the Cozy Glow problem, fans babying her when she proved herself more than capable of doing the same villainous acts as most of all of the other big bads in MLP.

[Wild Stallion]

11755163

And you realize that argument doesn't hold all that much weight when you consider how many people complained about ALL of those villains getting off so easy though, right?

Why not?

They literally let Discord off in Season 9, despite him orchstrating the Trio's escape and encouraging them to engage in acts of terror in the first place.

That season was literally everything they were complaining about. How is that in any way hypocritical?

Either treat the darn filly like a proper villain or stop complaining when other villains reform easily.

Even assuming the exact same portions of the fandom were complaining about both problems at same time... A massive leap in logic I have yet to see any justification for...

It is in fact the show who put forth the completely contrary argument that "everyone needs kindness..." "Except specifically these people we don't like..." despite having reformed arguably far worse in the past.

It's a contradiction in terms. You can't say everyone deserves kindness, and then withhold it at random without a concrete basis.

The show needs to reconcile it's morals.

If it pivoted solely to please the fans, and for no other reason, that's just you admitting it never had any principles to begin with.

I guess basically all I want the fandom to do here is to acknowledge that they're being hypocritical about this.

Again, how are they being hypocritical?

By holding a grown being to the agreed upon standard for adults, and a child to the agreed upon standard for children?

All the show does is reverse it, contrary to all the established information we know about how people develop biologically and neurologically.

--that right there is probably my biggest gripe about the Cozy Glow problem, fans babying her when she proved herself more than capable of doing the same villainous acts as most of all of the other big bads in MLP.

And my biggest gripe is fans pretending Discord was anything other than a sadistic prick who regularly endangered lives for his own sick amusement.

Like I said, late stage MLP villains are shitty people.

Cozy Glow is not the exception, but neither is any ever major villain the show "reformed".

[Scyphi]

11755197

Even assuming the exact same portions of the fandom were complaining about both problems at same time... A massive leap in logic I have yet to see any justification for...

Well...you kinda just complained about it, so...

In the end, though, I think we're still in agreement on what the problem is exactly here, in that there is a definite hypocrisy here. We just disagree on who it is that truly deserves the blame for it.

And looking at it from that perspective...it might actually be more likely that mistakes were made all around by all parties involved, rather than on any one sole person (fictional or otherwise). In other words, no one is truly blameless here. Discord instigated it, the Mane 6 and princesses fanned the flames for it, and Cozy Glow (and crew) exploited it (at least in terms of season 9). If we must blame someone, then we might as well blame them all, because they all played a role in it, or so all of the collected arguments suggest.

Still, if there really IS blame to be shared all around, that's probably why it irks the both of us so much--too many are trying to assign the blame to a sole figure when it was really multiple all colliding together. Rather than try and defend the ones we think less guilty, we all probably should be owning up to the fact that everyone had something to blame them for.

...which, now that I think about it, sort of works for this fic, because it's in many ways trying to make that exact same point, isn't it? Heh, go figure.

[zimmerwald1915]

11755197
The show's stance is consistent enough -- if you are useful to the state or other authority, the state will spend resources on your rehabilitation, and if you're not, it won't. Luna was rehabilitated because she fit neatly into the Equestrian constitutional arrangement, Starlight and Discord were powerful magic-users whose talents Twilight and Celestia respectively wanted to employ, etc.

Whether this stance is at all useful when approaching interpersonal relationships as a human person and not the question of what to do with offenders as an impersonal state machine is another matter entirely.

[DreadedCandiru2]

Meanwy, everyone is ignoring the other problem with their poor record keeping. O tempora, o mores, Opaline.

[Incandesca]

Holy fuck that was incredible. Kinda hard to put into words, actually. That's the first time I've felt adrenaline heartbeats reading something as slow and character-driven as this.

[Wild Stallion]

11755220

Well...you kinda just complained about it, so...

But it doesn't boil down to Cozy Glow good and Discord bad in my case, and I've seen enough people argue this point to know others feel the same way.

My problem and the problem of at least a few others, is the moral inconsistency, not the treatment itself.

Even people who like Cozy Glow have acknowledged that she's a little terror that you probably need to keep a eye on.

More than a few stories that attempted to reform her saw her given her own guard contingent or locked away for large chunks of the time.

That's more security than was employed for any of the reformed villains in the show (with the possible exception of Luna).

To argue people don't recognize Cozy Glow as a threat is just straw manning in most cases.

They might not see her as the same threat that Discord is, but that's really just common sense.

Even the show itself took more than a few shots at her effectiveness as a villain.

Discord instigated it, the Mane 6 and princesses fanned the flames for it, and Cozy Glow (and crew) exploited it (at least in terms of season 9).

The annoying thing is that it is yet another case of a big bad rising up because of laxness on the part of ponies.

They never properly dealt with or discouraged Discord's propensity for causing trouble. They pretended like it didn't exist.

They stuck Cozy Glow in a hole and forgot about her, and didn't even bother with any real guards or status updates in case something went wrong.

Pretty much every problem Equestria has can be traced back to "and they kicked the can down the road yet again".

Both Discord and Cozy Glow had clear issues and neither of them were dealt with before it became a problem.

That's what Season 9 is... All of the ponies unresolved and untreated issues coming together to make one big disaster.

If we must blame someone, then we might as well blame them all, because they all played a role in it, or so all of the collected arguments suggest.

You can certainly make the case for it. As bad as Discord is, no one has really been trying to teach him how to better interact with Equestria at large.

A problem both with the Main Six and with Celestia, who dumped him on them when they clearly weren't prepared for it, and has offered little to no help in the area of reforming him.

Aside from trying to capture Tirek she doesn't even seem to have a reason for reforming him at all, aside from trolling the nobility.

She's demonstrated terrible judgement letting Discord run free without purpose, and it's telling that most villains in the franchise she's either known personal or had in her power once or twice, and they still wound up causing trouble down the road.

Still, if there really IS blame to be shared all around, that's probably why it irks the both of us so much--too many are trying to assign the blame to a sole figure when it was really multiple all colliding together.

Agreed. Just about everyone acts shitty throughout Season 8-9 and it basically comes out of no where.

It's why everyone is so die hard on defending their favorites.

It's a instinctive reaction to watching the characterization of a show you love being butchered.

Rather than try and defend the ones we think less guilty, we all probably should be owning up to the fact that everyone had something to blame them for.

Well yeah. Season 9 is a shit show in no way deserving of ending the story of the first season of this show.

But as human beings who invested a lot of time and energy into this train wreck, people feel the need to salvage something. And so here we are.

...which, now that I think about it, sort of works for this fic, because it's in many ways trying to make that exact same point, isn't it? Heh, go figure.

Certainly I appreciate it's balanced approach. Frankly I think it gives Cozy Glow a lot of credit.

I think she would turn over Muffins eventually, but I'm surprised it allows her to feel anything genuine beyond grudging appreciation for the primaries on her own.

11755470
Or even as a impersonal state machine. Discord's redemption is in fact counterintuitive.

Every major action he takes throughout the course of the show is designed to weaken and undermine Equestria as a nation, both in its super structure and the lives of it's inhabitants.

Rather then prevent him from doing so, or actively steer him towards more constructive pursuits, they actively ignore his efforts.

No one really benefited extraordinarily from Discord's "reformation" except for that one incredibly specific time where he was no more useful than a warm body to distract the changelings, which any warm blooded creature could have done, including Zecora.

That's the annoying thing about Discord's reformation.

It served no one in a meaningful way apart from himself and the show runners.

It serves no practical purpose, and they put no effort into making it do so beyond a few token attempts, which were never followed up on by the cast, nor elaborated on by the production crew.

It's basically the exact opposite of what any hero's arc is supposed to be... Except it manages to be Meaningless and irritating at both the Beginning and the End of the journey.

[Scyphi]

11756862

To argue people don't recognize Cozy Glow as a threat is just straw manning in most cases.

Oh no, they're definitely out there. I'm not exaggerating when I say I've consistently encountered people who've argued, word for word, that Cozy should've just had her butt paddled and then sent on her way, because since she's a kid that's apparently all you should need to do or so they claim. And it seems like whenever I get into these debates about Cozy (which is admittedly more than I probably should, because I apparently can't resist or something), there's always, ALWAYS, at least one who tries to make that argument. So they're definitely out there in greater numbers than you're giving credit.

But on the other side of the coin, it's still nice to hear there also seems to be a bit of an observer's bias on my part here, and that there are more who take more grounded and realistic stances to Cozy than I give credit for too. That's actually somewhat relieving, lemme tell you.

They never properly dealt with or discouraged Discord's propensity for causing trouble. They pretended like it didn't exist.

Okay, in at least the terms of season 9, we need to give Discord at least some credit here, because yes, he instigated the whole mess when he shouldn't have, or at least consulted with somebody about the plan first before enacting it, but he DID have good intentions behind it, misled though it was. The end goal, after all, was to try and present Twilight a scenario to help build her confidence as a ruler, because apparently Discord felt she needed one, further implying he agreed she was the right gal for the job to at least some degree. Further, he brought the Terrible Trio together with a scheme to try and get them to work together as a team sneaking into their minds the ideals of unity and harmony and laying the groundwork for possible reformation later, something the show itself did explore a little ("Frenemies," anyone?) and this fic indirectly acknowledged was working (even though Discord wasn't assigned credit for it).

That's not to say Discord was right to do what he did, nor that he didn't make a huge mess that didn't need to be and put the whole country at stake, because that's all definitely still the case. Discord shouldn't have done what he did. Nor will I say the show did everything it should've in response to all that. But at the very least, he didn't really mean malicious intent behind it, at least not for the Mane 6 and crew. He just has, as he always has, a funny way of showing it.

And looking at his arc on a whole, Discord did still change for the better after his reformation, doing things he NEVER would've beforehand, so he was still troublesome, but there was still clear progress being made with him. It's more debatable if Cozy, or anyone else in the Terrible Trio had or were ever going to, make similar progress, and then it came down to, like it or not, simple threat assessment on how to handle them from there.

It's a instinctive reaction to watching the characterization of a show you love being butchered.

And even then, there was still good moments to be had in both seasons. I begrudgingly agree that season 8 was about when the show jumped the shark overall, but I still loved the concept of season 8 and many of its individual episodes (in fact, I didn't really have any real problems with its finale other than Cozy just overall feeling like an odd choice for a villain), and despite its faults, I still walked away satisfied with season 9 and its series finale, and at the end of the day, that's all I wanted from FiM. I didn't need it to be perfect--that's too tall an order for any TV show--I just needed to be satisfied enough with the end product. And I was. And I admit sometimes I get tired of people focusing on the bad all the time, even if it is justified, that I feel obligated to jump in and remind there was still good to be had in all that too.

But then I've always been a bit of an optimist on these sort of things.

[PatchworkPoltergeist]

Indulge me a moment of further exploration of the background of this story, dear readers.
As previously stated, this story explores Equestria in the transitional period between gens four and gens five. Gen five is already working with the presumption that the tribes came into conflict, and that conflict caused division. This small window is by no means the ONLY reasoning or explanation of Equestria's current political climate, but it is part of it.

Culture is not stagnant. The circumstances of Equestria, the culture of Equestria, and the political climate of Equestria a thousand years ago and the modern Equestria are different beasts. Ponies in those first few millennia of Celestria and Luna's reign were surrounded by threats of monsters, dragons, and other creatures. It's much easier to unite when you have a common enemy. It is also easier to unite when the consequences of inter-tribal conflict, a conflict so bad it froze the old country, is still relatively fresh in everypony's minds. Twilight integrating the other creatures was a good thing, by all means. It ushered in a golden age of peace and friendship unseen in even Celestia's era. This means the next generations have never known what it's like to be attacked by monsters, raided by dragons, or fearful of griffons. They don't know outside threats, and they have lost any semblance of a common enemy, especially not external ones. Peace is all they know, and it's taken for granted. It's hard to truly appreciate being full when you've never been hungry.

Ponies now had the time to consider themselves, and remember all the little disagreements and resentments and unhappiness they they had previously ignored, all the things they let pass, all the things that bothered them. Just because the tribes were getting along doesn't mean they never mistreated each other, or disregarded each other, or that the culture may have unintentionally left some ponies hanging out to dry. Eventually, those things came to a boil. The Cozy debate was the pot it boiled in.
The short version goes something like this:

- "Who is that pony in the statue anyway?"
- "Why is the only pony sentenced as stone a Pegasus, come to think of it? Why did all the Unicorns get a second chance?"
- "Because the Unicorns improved and learned from their mistakes. Maybe the Pegasi are more prone to viciousness. Maybe when Pegasi go bad they go bad to the point of being irredeemable. Maybe the Pegasi need to learn how to control their own children. Also this is exactly why magic is best left to the Unicorns anyway."
- "Okay smart guy, if we're playing that game, maybe we should talk about how OFTEN Unicorns corrupt in the first place. Maybe there's something wrong with YOU. And since when do other tribes not have magic?"
- "They do, but come on. It's not real magic."

And it just got worse from there.

This didn't happen on a national stage, and it didn't happen in some grandiose explosion. This is hundreds of little slowburns that coalesced into one big fire. Princess Twilight, despite her best efforts, cannot be everywhere at once and is not a mind reader. She can't solve what she can't see, and busy with the minutia of daily politics in Canterlot, she doesn't see until it's almost too late to walk it back. A warped sense of time thanks to slower aging doesn't help. (From experience, I guarantee you ten years goes by terrifyingly fast the older you get.) Twilight honestly feels like she rested her eyes for two seconds, and when she opened them again, the world was on fire. Literally.

It's debatable how much of the backlash to Cozy Glow actually was really ABOUT Cozy Glow. It may have been more about the fact that so many ponies who posed a threat to Equestria and walked happened to be Unicorns. More importantly, the fact that the crown kept those facts secret. (Or at least didn't advertise them.) Nightmare Moon's prison was thousands of miles away in the sky, seen as a silhouette, and a pony of strength and power. Cozy Glow's prison is at eye level, with every single facet of her young terror on full display. For years. It's hard to ignore the age, and harder to ignore her tribe. It became a point of discussion. The discussion became a debate. The debate became a demand. This process is seen in the collection of articles, as well as the memorial beside the statue. This, along with The Student In Stone (a book that had HUGE impact and also had paragraphs of exposition about it I had to cut when this stopped being an epistolary story) is what prompted the push to shorten the sentence. Twilight was willing to hear out the public on that.

She was less willing to entertain the complaints of Unicorn favoritism or the idea that Unicorn magic keeps pushing into spaces where it isn't welcome. Especially not when said complaints are things better handled between individuals, or within institutions and communities. Twilight, as she says, favors unity. She wants to favor all of them, but in the process, some tribes equate that to "if all of us are special, none of us are special".
Additionally, because this happened in the midst of a wave of other creatures residing in Equestria, it no longer felt like a land of Earth Ponies, Unicorns, and Pegasi, three individual tribes with unique qualities to be favored and loved. It felt like a land of ponies and other creatures. You're not a Pegasus, you're just a pony. It feels like your tribe isn't special. In fact, when other tribes can also do the exact same things you do, when Unicorns walk on clouds, when Pegasi can write spell circles, all the things you thought made you special aren't special anymore. It feels like your entire culture is dying. And the Princess doesn't even care. She says you're being silly. She says you're shutting the others out. Well, maybe you'd like to care about your own kind for once. Are they not important? Can't it not be about everypony for once, for ONCE, and can we care about MY tribe? If the Princess isn't in your corner, and if your family who are so stuck in the old ways aren't in your corner, maybe it's time to find somepony who is.

And then somepony finally got hurt by Unicorn magic. Badly. Nopony knows who cast it, but they sure know an Earth Pony or Pegasus didn't do it.
That triggers the Market Riots (so-called because the accident first happened in the market).
The riot triggers Cozy's spellbreak.
Cozy Glow, frightened, angry, in pain, and powerless, is desperate to feel okay again. To feel some semblance of control. And she discovers that many Pegasi her own age feel the same way. Thus, she gladly dumps a gallon of gasoline on the fire. The burn isn't slow anymore.

Also, an ancient alicorn nopony's ever heard of is quietly running around with immense firepower and zero moral code. That doesn't really help either.

As one would assume, that's all far too much to shove into a meager 15000 words (though I do have plans for a longer story in this Equestria in my back pocket). So at most we get the tip of the iceberg. After all, this is the setting and background, not the heart of the story.
This is not a story of how Equesrtria is breaking apart, this is a story about using the ethics and values of Equestria to build understanding and keep it together. At least for today. Nobody can predict the future, but we always have today.

[Wild Stallion]

11756894

I'm not exaggerating when I say I've consistently encountered people who've argued, word for word, that Cozy should've just had her butt paddled and then sent on her way, because since she's a kid that's apparently all you should need to do, or so they claim.

I've seen a few start her punishment off with a spanking. The follow up tends to vary though. And all cards on the table, a spanking it still a way worse punishment than Starlight, Tempest or Sunset got.

Which is where that attitude comes from, I expect. Because Reformations in MLP were always that naive, insisting that all these villains needed was a little love, in spite of all the evidence indicating that these ponies were remorseless from the get-go.

So, it's really hard for me to blame fanfic writers when they pick up on those themes and work them into their stories, however naive they might be in doing so.

The end goal, after all, was to try and present Twilight a scenario to help build her confidence as a ruler, because apparently Discord felt she needed one, further implying he agreed she was the right gal for the job to at least some degree.

So, he says. We literately just came from an episode in Season 8 where he claimed to be testing Starlight for her benefit (something all his acquaintances insist on behaving as if it were true) when was clearly just jealous of her and trying ruin her day. The dude is a proven pathological liar.

And unlike with Cozy Glow, everyone insists on taking him seriously even though after seasons worth of this behavior, they should really know better than to trust anything from his grinning maw, especially if they still can't read his expressions after all this time.

Further, he brought the Terrible Trio together with a scheme to try and get them to work together as a team sneaking into their minds the ideals of unity and harmony and laying the groundwork for possible reformation later,

The guy introduced himself as all powerful tyrant and coerced them into a plot to murder Twilight and her Friends. He uses the phrase "destroy" several times in his address to them.

If he did have a plan to reform them, he never admits it or even suggests that it could have been possible, even though a more sympatric motivation would have been easier to explain and gone over easier (at least with Fluttershy).

And looking at his arc on a whole, Discord did still change for the better after his reformation, doing things he NEVER would've beforehand, so he was still troublesome, but there was still clear progress being made with him.

Flooding the apple family farm, setting a bug bear on the students of Twilight's school, partnering with villains multiple times over?

He's gotten better at dogging consequences and is slightly better at socializing (which is cold comfort to all the ponies who've been collateral damage in his schemes over the years.)

Even Fluttershy isn't immune to this as A Matter Of Principals and Season 9 demonstrates.

It's more debatable if Cozy, or anyone else in the Terrible Trio had or were ever going to, make similar progress, and then it came down to, like it or not, simple threat assessment on how to handle them from there.

I can't speak for Cozy Glow, but Tirek proved to be amenable to socializing multiple times throughout the series. And unlike Chrysalis or Cozy Glow, his power and capabilities actually increase the less regard he has for people.

So, you'd think he'd be the most self-centered of them all, but he's actually probably the most manganous of them all. He's always shot straight with the Main Six, he upholds his deal with Chrysalis and Cozy Glow, and he was even getting along pretty well with Discord, until the latter reveled he was concealing information from him.

Certainly he's the one who matures the most throughout Season 9. He goes from holding ponies in honorable contempt to actually becoming fairly close to Cozy Glow, despite her difficult personality (even ignoring her attempted betrayal). He even goes from hording magic to sharing it, which is a complete 180 from his supposed motivations up until that point.

I begrudgingly agree that season 8 was about when the show jumped the shark overall, but I still loved the concept of season 8 and many of its individual episodes

I mean, anyone can have good ideas. I've been told I have good ideas. That doesn't make me a good writer. And in this case, even some of the ideas were lacking, much less their execution.

(in fact, I didn't really have any real problems with its finale other than Cozy just overall feeling like an odd choice for a villain),

It was less Cozy Glow herself and more the entire magic drain plot.

It made little sense from a mechanical or cannon perspective how Cozy Glow was able to make contact with someone she had never met before, or why six random artifacts were able to channel so much magical power as to leave her entire plane of existence devoid of magic.

If she had sold them out to Chrysalis instead, that would have at least solved some of the technical issues.

But then I've always been a bit of an optimist on these sort of things.

Optimism and I get on like Oil and Water in real life. Maybe that's why I don't mind a bit of naivety about villains in fiction. Who knows?

[Scyphi]

11759460

So, he says. We literately just came from an episode in Season 8 where he claimed to be testing Starlight for her benefit (something all his acquaintances insist on behaving as if it were true) when was clearly just jealous of her and trying ruin her day. The dude is a proven pathological liar.

Well, I dunno if I'd go as far as calling him a pathological liar, on the grounds that he does demonstrate speaking the truth more often than he lies, but yes, it's a fair point he does had a tendency to stretch the truth when it benefits him...or at least try to, as he's not always very convincing about it.

Which is why in the case of season 9, I'm more inclined to believe him at his word, at least once things started hitting the fan, because he knew things had gotten well out of even his control and he knew he was going to need help to resolve it, and to do that...everyone sort of needed to know what was actually going on.

At the very least, I don't have reason enough to assume he might've been lying about all of that. I don't really see what it would've gained him, particularly as the Terrible Trio would've happily sold him out on any lies contradicting what they knew had actually happened.

And unlike with Cozy Glow, everyone insists on taking him seriously even though after seasons worth of this behavior, they should really know better than to trust anything from his grinning maw, especially if they still can't read his expressions after all this time.

I suspect that your stance on Discord is akin to that of mine on Cozy, especially seeing I've noticed by now that you're quick to single out specifically Discord for criticism.

But if I can go on about how nobody's treating Cozy as a proper threat, I suppose it's only fair for you to do similar for Discord.

At any rate, Discord's a tricky player in the affairs, because unless you strip them of his powers, he is by far more powerful than literally all of the other villains. Combined. Honestly, Equestria's darn lucky he typically chooses to use those powers for petty pranks than to cause actual harm on anyone, because he could do so with frightening ease if he ever thought to. So I can kinda see why Celestia wanted to try reforming him, because it was clear just sealing him away in a statue and leaving him there wasn't going to work because the season 2 premiere had proved he could eventually escape it again in the right circumstances and there was no longer any guarantees it wouldn't happen again. So, better to see if they could instead get him to come around to their side so he didn't have to be a enemy to fight anymore, a plan that worked somewhat to Discord's benefit too, because then he could, at least within reason, have the chance to be himself too.

Does he test his boundaries every chance he gets, trying everyone's patience in the process and raising questions over whether keeping him around was worth it? Oh absolutely. In fact, I don't really consider him to have truly reformed until after the first Tirek encounter at the end of season 4, (after which Discord did have a bit of a shift in his worldview of things and started trying a little harder to meet the demands of reformation). He also makes himself a continuous annoyance for many, partly for his own trollish amusement, but underneath it all there is usually a valid point he's trying to make, in a very Q-esque sort of fashion, often times his way of saying "if I'm really reformed and your ally now, how come you aren't giving me all the benefits of it and treat me as if I'm not?" It was his way of leveling valid criticisms on the ponies and that, if they really want to commit to this "reform your villains" schtick, then there was more to it than just declaring a villain reformed and calling it a day. Yes, sometimes it was fueled by his own greed or want to be included, but the fact he still had a valid point to make at all still shows he wasn't just blowing hot air with it too.

I've actually seen Discord as one of the better written reformed villains in MLP for this very reason--his reformation wasn't instantaneous, nor did he become a totally changed character because that wasn't who he was. Imperfect though it was at times, his reformation arc feels one of the more natural and realistic in comparison to others, and I'm actually quite glad for it (I was venomously opposed to the idea of him reforming initially on the grounds that I feared it'd change his character, take away everything that had made him so interesting, and part of that was him constantly toeing the line, so the fact the show chose to uphold that regardless of his reformed status was always a good move in my mind).

The guy introduced himself as all powerful tyrant and coerced them into a plot to murder Twilight and her Friends. He uses the phrase "destroy" several times in his address to them.

Well, obviously, if he came to them and told them he was going to try and get them to reform for good, they weren't ever going to do it, so he chose to set it up in a scenario in which they could be eased into it through something they'd actually WANT to do, without realizing what it was they were actually picking up along the way. The plan was actually kind of clever...if Discord hadn't failed to consider the villains possibly scheming behind his back so to take it all for themselves.

And no, it's never clearly stated that Discord planned to set them up for a reformation, and is a bit speculation on my part, I admit...but surely he knew getting them to work together in a team would still set up for that, and even if he hadn't, the plan had always been to pass off the group to the Mane 6 to handling once the time was right (had the plan worked as intended), so there was still a set-up to give the Mane 6 a chance to try and reform them when they were defeated if they so chose, so the possibility was definitely always there, whether acknowledged or not. That fans seemed to have expected it enough to be annoyed it didn't happen could be argued in support of that assumption.

Flooding the apple family farm, setting a bug bear on the students of Twilight's school, partnering with villains multiple times over?

First one doesn't count, since that was before he'd really tried to reform at all (and was all swiftly undone once Discord did decide to give reforming a shot), and the last one is exaggerated somewhat, seeing he really only partnered with villains twice, once with Tirek, which he clearly lived to regret, and again with the Terrible Trio, but that time was so he could deliberately lead them into a confrontation with Twilight, a confrontation he fully expected Twilight and company to win, so he was really more trying to trick them into getting defeated if nothing else--he wasn't really on their side on that occasion.

But that he even bothered to try such a scheme in season 9 at all just shows his outlook on things had changed. Otherwise, it would've just been "Twilight's Kingdom" all over again.

I can't speak for Cozy Glow, but Tirek proved to be amenable to socializing multiple times throughout the series. And unlike Chrysalis or Cozy Glow, his power and capabilities actually increase the less regard he has for people.

Of the three, I can see Tirek being the most likely to reform too, but he didn't exactly show any want or intention to do so upon defeat, and, like the other three, seemed determined to stay the path (even though he was the one who foresaw the impending punishment). This is unlike the other reformed villains, who either in their defeat had a clear change of heart, or, in the case of Discord, saw that resisting meant facing a punishment they really wanted to avoid or the loss of some other key benefit (for Discord, Fluttershy's friendship), enough to at least play along enough to give reforming a chance.

Of course, I never said all three of them can't ever be reformed, just that the season 9 finale didn't seem like the right time and place for it for them to decide to, and that it would be a tough road for all three of them, if possible at all (I have my doubts about Chryssi).

Though that said, I do like the idea of MLP acknowledging that even it can't quite reform all of its villains, and that there would always be a few that would just be forever villains until defeated, like it or not.

I mean, anyone can have good ideas. I've been told I have good ideas. That doesn't make me a good writer. And in this case, even some of the ideas were lacking, much less their execution.

That doesn't mean the whole project was doomed because there were some bad apples mixed in. It's a fatalist way of looking at it anyway.

(Forgive any overlooked typos in this comment--my keyboard is being troublesome and its made editing frustrating to the point that I've lost patience with it at this point so I'm posting this comment as-is anyway. Sorry!)

[zimmerwald1915]

11759983

But that he even bothered to try such a scheme in season 9 at all just shows his outlook on things had changed. Otherwise, it would've just been "Twilight's Kingdom" all over again.

Funny you should say that -- I'm more than half convinced that Discord's "betrayal" in Twilight's Kingdom was exactly the same gambit he would try again in Season 9. Consider his actions in the very beginning of the episode. He had bookmarked all the key episodes in the friendship journal, and obviously wanted Twilight &co. to open the box.

[Scyphi]

11760165
Well...yes and no, I suppose, because sure he wanted them to open the box and seemed to have a good idea on what needed to be done to do it before the rest did, but that was before he really got involved with Tirek. And it seemed clear from how he behaved around Tirek that he didn't really anticipate him becoming a factor, or Tirek offering them to team up, OR Tirek later betraying him.

I guess it's a possibility, but I see it as a bit of a stretch.

Not everything Discord does has to have a double-meaning anyway. Sometimes he really does mean what he says/does at first glance.

[iisaw]

So... wow. You've pulled off something (several things, actually) that I thought would be impossible. Taking into account all the canon sources, you've made a solid and believable link between G4 and G5, while staying true to Twilight and Cozy's personalities, and how multi-ethnic tensions usually play out under the hands hooves of disingenuous/egotistical leaders and agents provocateur.

All of which makes me hate this story. Don't get me wrong; I completely recognize and acknowledge the incredible amount of writing skill, research, and analytical thought that went into it, and if I preferred G5 to G4, this would probably go onto my Top Favorites shelf. But I pretty much loathe G5, and being shown a believable and defensible way that all the characters I loved from G4 will ultimately fail and die amid the ruins of their civilization... Well, I guess that's a "me" problem.

Still... Damn fine piece of writing.

11752368

"I'm imagining Celestia is seeing a dark future, and has been affected by it."

My take is that the scene is a necessary confirmation of the mortality of the G4 alicorns. For G5 to exist, Celestia and all the others need to die.

[Wild Stallion]

11759983

Well, I dunno if I'd go as far as calling him a pathological liar, on the grounds that he does demonstrate speaking the truth more often than he lies,

I mean he introduced himself to Pinkie Pie with flattery, proclaiming her as his favorite early on only to psychologically abuse and crush her later on.

He only initially befriended Fluttershy to escape punishment and mess with her.

He ran a running con on her even after they became friends, stirring up trouble and endangering and messing with her friends.

Even after Season 4 threatens violence a couple of times after that, even sending Fluttershy into harms way so he could attack the school.

He perpetrated a long con on the Ponyvile five pretending to be friends with them just to hurt Twilight emotionally.

And he always always has some story to cover for his insecurities or spin his actions as helping, but we see him irritated enough times after a scheme failed to piss his mark of to indicate the guy is a sadist.

Certainly it's the case throughout the early seasons that sadism is his motivating factor and he still reacts violently when he's agitated in later seasons.

The guy's earned his title as a deceiver.

Which is why in the case of season 9, I'm more inclined to believe him at his word, at least once things started hitting the fan, because he knew things had gotten well out of even his control and he knew he was going to need help to resolve it, and to do that...everyone sort of needed to know what was actually going on.

They needed to know that the Trio was out and what they were up to.

There was no reason for Discord to own up to his actual motivations to others secure their cooperation.

In fact if this was some sort of last romp before Twilight assumed the throne and presumably tightened restrictions on him, he'd have every reason not to tell her what was going on.

I don't really see what it would've gained him, particularly as the Terrible Trio would've happily sold him out on any lies contradicting what they knew had actually happened.

Except he arranged for them to be silenced immediately after they were defeated.

There was no time for them to say anything in their defense, assuming anyone would have listened anyways.

I suspect that your stance on Discord is akin to that of mine on Cozy, especially seeing I've noticed by now that you're quick to single out specifically Discord for criticism.

Both are similar.

The only real difference that we see in show is that Cozy Glow doesn't have the power to execute her influence on a whim, and is much more dependent on praise than Discord.

At any rate, Discord's a tricky player in the affairs, because unless you strip them of his powers, he is by far more powerful than literally all of the other villains. Combined.

Which just means they should be taking him far more seriously than they do.

Letting him waltz around free without any supervision or means of control is not taking him seriously.

Honestly, Equestria's darn lucky he typically chooses to use those powers for petty pranks than to cause actual harm on anyone, because he could do so with frightening ease if he ever thought to.

The dude is explosively temperamental and his "pranks" are hazardous at best.

Really the only reason to assume he hasn't killed someone yet is that it never happened on screen.

Yes, sometimes it was fueled by his own greed or want to be included, but the fact he still had a valid point to make at all still shows he wasn't just blowing hot air with it too.

Cozy Glow rightfully points out her superior ability at making friends to Twilight.

And while they never show the connection between Starlight's Philosophy and Cutie Marks role in creating prejudice, the simple fact is that not everyone in Equestria benefited from their existence.

Neither of those characters ceased to be villains because they had a point.

Discord does what he does to be a sadist. We see him express disappointment multiple times when a scheme failed to demoralize someone.

Him having a point is just how he justifies it.

First one doesn't count, since that was before he'd really tried to reform at all (and was all swiftly undone once Discord did decide to give reforming a shot)

It showcases his violent and manipulative character when starting out. Something that persists throughout his tenure.

That fans seemed to have expected it enough to be annoyed it didn't happen could be argued in support of that assumption.

Certainly the fans of the show considered it a possibility. That doesn't mean that it ever crossed Discord's mind.

But that he even bothered to try such a scheme in season 9 at all just shows his outlook on things had changed. Otherwise, it would've just been "Twilight's Kingdom" all over again.

Yeah he knew better than to trust them this time.

It could be argued that the only reason he was surprised that they turned on them was that he didn't think they could operate the bell without him.

Who would have expected that there would have been a book on how to work it in the Canterlot Archives? Or that those three would be the ones to find it?

Him hiding his identity was just a sensible precaution at that point. It's the same reason he never stayed under the same roof as him or why he rationed Tirek's magic.

Anymore leeway would have left him vulnerable.

This is unlike the other reformed villains, who either in their defeat had a clear change of heart, or, in the case of Discord, saw that resisting meant facing a punishment they really wanted to avoid or the loss of some other key benefit

Tirek gave up a perfectly good chance to steal the others magic to work with them.

Cozy Glow loves her attention enough to subsume her desire for ruling in order to play at being a good filly.

So the idea of using punishment or as a deterrent isn't really exclusive to Discord. But he's basically the only villain in the show to receive that treatment post punishment.

Everybody else was a spur of the moment thing.

That doesn't mean the whole project was doomed because there were some bad apples mixed in.

Way more than some. There are massive inconsistencies with characterization and lore. They even swapped Yona and Smolder's personalities after two seasons.

It's not the first time they've done this, but Seasons 8 and 9 combine all the show's most nonsensical problems together in the span of two short years. That's impressive, even for this show.

(Forgive any overlooked typos in this comment--my keyboard is being troublesome and its made editing frustrating to the point that I've lost patience with it at this point so I'm posting this comment as-is anyway. Sorry!)

Naw! No problem. The lure of perfectionism is something I understand all too well.

It looks fine to me.

[Scyphi]

11763248
Feeling the subject of Discord is getting beaten enough at this point, I'll just say for now that you do seem to prefer assuming the absolute worse about Discord in nearly every instance. Sometimes, as discussed, it's not unjustified, but I do feel it might be a bit unfair for Discord as a character to do that so automatically, because not only am I not sure it's actually true in every instance listed (hence our discussion on it), it's also showing a clear bias to a character that, I should gently point out, has potential of skewing one's view of the character unfairly. If Discord were to be put on trial for anything, for instance, I am not sure you would be an ideal person to serve on the jury because of that trend.

Now, I myself may be more critical of, say, Cozy Glow than most, but I still try to give her the benefit of the doubt, to assume she does have the potential to be better than she appears. I've never said at any point that she couldn't be reformed, for example, just that I saw it as probably requiring more effort than I see a lot of fans suggest, and as a result, I can kinda of see the cast's logic for reacting to her the way they did in the show (whether right or wrong). By contrast, you don't seem to give Discord the same sort of luxury. Yes, he could have more malicious intent than obviously stated in all of the examples you list, but at the same time, I question whether there's sufficient evidence to be certain that's really the only outcome to assume in all of them.

I apologize if this seems overly critical of you, and I am trying to phrase it as delicately as I can so to minimize that--it's not my wish to cause offense here--but it is a trend I've observed consistently throughout our chain of comments enough to feel it merits mentioning at this point.

In the end, though, Discord is probably going to just have to be a subject we agree to disagree on.

Cozy Glow rightfully points out her superior ability at making friends to Twilight.

Eh, she talks the talk on that, but I have questioned whether or not she also actually walks the walk. She certainly does in the terms of this fanfic, but looking at it solely from show canon I'm less certain. I don't think she's actually better at making friends than Twilight in either case though, on the grounds that, even when the friendship is genuine, Cozy still tends to approach it thinking "how can I use this to my benefit" a little more than she should, which is a problem because friendship should be a give-take relationship on both sides, not just solely the one.

But then that was always Cozy's big stumbling block towards reforming. She gets friendship very well, but she, for some reason, keeps getting the wrong morals out of it and keeps using it as if a tool or stepping stool to boost herself up to loftier heights, and that's not how its supposed to work, and probably why she keeps finding herself with rifts between herself and others such as Twilight. Get her to go past that stumbling block finally though, and she should have a pretty straight shot towards a true reformation with time, but she doesn't seem to show a lot of interest in doing so, even in this fanfic, though to be sure, the first steps towards her finally doing so were still taken. Whether or not that finally takes her the path down it to changing for the better though...that's mostly left to reader interpretation.

They even swapped Yona and Smolder's personalities after two seasons.

Being a long time Young 6 enthusiast, I admit I don't see this at all. Yona and Smolder seem as uniquely separate in personality now as they did when first introduced. Yona proud and boldly admitting as such but always an eager cinnamon bun despite that, and Smolder sassy and sarcastic while carefully guarding a softer side that she's not as open about, as most dragons seem to be (I can't think of any in G4 that we were introduced to that didn't have a hidden soft side, even Torch).

[Wild Stallion]

11756951
Just got back and had the opportunity to read this.

You do a really good job at surmising this whole mess as well as highlighting motivations behind movements like this succinctly.

If you ever come out with a sequel I would read it.

[iisaw]

11763300 11763248
I've been enjoying your discussion about Discord vs. Cozy, and villain reformation in general, but hadn't anything to add until now.

It occurs to me that the critical thing that makes a villain redeemable is whether or not they acquire or awaken a sense of empathy toward their victims. Without that, their basic personality (demonstrated up to the point of their defeat) would eventually lead them to slip back into evil-doing from habit, if nothing else. And that empathy has to be applicable to everyone else, not just a single exceptional person.*

I think it's telling that not only a lot of fans, but some of the official writers as well, naturally came up with the question, "What will Discord do when Fluttershy dies?"** making the automatic assumption that Fluttershy is the only pony he really cares about. Not a good candidate for reformation, it seems.

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* I have mixed feelings about Starlight Glimmer, but seeing Twilight trying multiple times to hammer this idea into her head was usually entertaining.

** Just for the record, I did not think the comic that answered the question was satisfying or believable.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Heartbreakingly, stomach-twistingly believable. Given how well this portrays and supports Equestria’s foundation crumbling out from under it, I have to wonder how Celestia managed to hold the place together for a millennium. A shame she never passed that particular secret on to Twilight. (Though I suppose the prophetic dreams helped.)

The foregone conclusion may be the worst part of it. Twilight will fail. Friendship won’t pull through. And Cozy Glow? By all evidence, she’ll be completely forgotten.

A fantastic read, painful though it may be. (And the death of Best Pony didn’t help.) Thank you for it and best of luck in the judging.

[Cerulean Blue]

Really rich and vibrant, full of the little details and threads that really make a story.

All I want to do is know more of the greater world, which is a fantastic way to end a story!

[Lionpaw315]

I'll admit, I avoided reading this for a bit, just because when it was first published I saw a few comments saying that Twilight would have to be uncharacteristically stupid to have Equestria fall into this state. Then it won Imposing Sovereigns, and, well, I trust their judgement, so I read this, and once I started, I couldn't put it down. Wow. I'm not sure what I could add to the praises that everyone else already hasn't- maybe it's because I'm a huge fan of Estee's works, but I was willing to buy this darker swing. It didn't literally come out of nowhere, and the points about Discord and the two unicorns... we as the omniscient audience know things were a bit more complicated, but yeah, I can definitely see bad faith interpretations springing up in-universe.

I feel so bad for Twilight through this. She knows that Cozy's a lying, mean little bitch, but she can't just say that without causing the Primaries to rally even harder behind Cozy. And yeah, Cozy's sympathetic, and I do honestly feel bad for her- I still kinda wanna punt her like a football. I think it would've been really cathartic for Twilight. What really got to me is that, as sympathetic as Cozy is, she's still so mean. I might not be so annoyed if she was genuinely a tribalist, but causing the effective end of the world just out of being petty is so... AAAH!

Good work, fantastic worldbuilding, fantastic prose. It's all awful, but in a great way. And it's even worse when you think about gen5. But again in a good way. Like everyone else said, I can't believe you actually gave me a way to believe that gen5 could be gen4 in the distant distant future.

[AFanaticRabbit]

I read this with a group of friends and whoo boy this story does a great job. It ends on an uncertain note about the future (and obviously this implies G5 is gonna happen) so the tension never eases off, and you do a fantastic job of constantly fingering and plucking that tension. This absolutely deserved the win it got.

[popyloaw]

11752294
Discord was actively turned to stone for at least multiple melenia why does everyone forget this he had it rough.If he didn't reform now it didn't really matter the punishment he should've just been killed for the danger he is.